Patrick Kelly, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, delivers his first Supreme Knight’s Report during the organization’s 139th Annual Convention, Aug. 3, 2021. Credit: Knights of Columbus/screenshot.
Hartford, Conn., Aug 3, 2021 / 19:55 pm (CNA).
Patrick Kelly, the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, highlighted the group’s charitable work amid the COVID-19 pandemic, announced plans to support faith formation initiatives, and lauded the group’s newly-beatified founder in a speech Tuesday.
“Make no mistake: Now is a time for Knights. The past 18 months have amplified old challenges and given rise to new ones. They face our families, our faith, and our culture as a whole,” Kelly said during the Aug. 3 virtual address.
Being a Knight means “a life of faith in action, a life of boldness in brotherhood, a life worth living. Catholic men are looking for nothing less. In the Knights of Columbus, they will find it,” Kelly said.
The Knights of Columbus, the world’s largest Catholic fraternal organization, has over 2 million members in 16,000 councils worldwide. The order was founded in 1882 by a Connecticut parish priest, Blessed Michael McGivney. Initially, the organization was intended to assist widows and their families upon the deaths of their husbands.
Fr. McGivney was beatified Oct. 31, with Pope Francis praising his “zeal for the proclamation of the Gospel” which “made him an outstanding witness of Christian solidarity and fraternal assistance.”
“These words are a powerful validation of our Founder’s vision and of our own work. They remind us that Father McGivney’s life is an inspiration to the Church and to the world,” Kelly commented.
Kelly’s speech follows the opening Mass of the Knights’ 139th annual convention, held at St. Mary’s Church in New Haven, where Blessed McGivney is buried. The Knights normally convene in-person each year, but 2021 marks the second year in a row that the meeting has been held virtually.
Kelly succeeded Carl Anderson as Supreme Knight in March. The new Supreme Knight praised his predecessor’s leadership, noting that in Anderson’s 20 years of leadership, the group gained more than 400,000 members, charitable donations rose by more than 60%, and the order expanded to Europe and mainland Asia.
Kelly pointed to Pope Francis’ declaration of a Year of St. Joseph, and highlighted the pope’s call to imitate the “creative courage” of Christ’s foster father.
“In St. Joseph, we see our mission and mandate. Guard the family. Guard the truth. He led through service and creative courage. So must we. It is the only way to overcome the hurdles facing our families, the Church and our culture,” he said.
Kelly announced that the Knights will, this fall, debut on network TV a documentary on St. Joseph, which he said will explore why St. Joseph is the ideal model for Catholic men.
In particular, Kelly lauded St. Joseph in his role as “Guardian of the Truth”— in his case, guardian of The Truth Himself, Jesus Christ.
“We, too, must defend this truth,” Kelly said.
“We live in a time of bigotry and intolerance. Key truths — about life, marriage, the nature of the family, and the meaning of freedom — are increasingly denied and even vilified. Yet, this makes our commitment to truth all the more important. Now is the time to inspire our fellow Catholics to stand for what’s right. St. Joseph is our guide. Let us pray for his intercession. And let us make his creative courage our own, for the sake of the family, and the truth.”
Kelly said the Knights will continue to be a sign of unity by standing for the truth.
“I have long admired the Order’s impact on men. As a Navy JAG officer for many years, I saw young men who had the courage to serve their country, but who nonetheless made poor decisions and got into trouble. My job was to represent them at courts-martial. Many lacked strong families or strong father figures. And too few had a living and real faith. This made a lasting impression on me and I came to appreciate that one of the best things about the Knights is that we can help fill this void.”
Kelly said that the truth is grounded in the Eucharist, and said the Knights are called to have a special reverence for the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Kelly announced that the Knights are and will continue to be major sponsors of the US bishops’ planned Eucharistic revival, set to take place over the next few years.
“As supreme knight, I will prioritize new initiatives to strengthen the faith of men, and the faith of our families. I firmly believe that, more and more, our success as an Order will be judged by this standard,” he said.
“Our growth depends on empowering men to be the husbands and fathers that God wants us to be. It is harder than ever, and for that reason, we must push forward as never before. It will require creative courage.”
In the past year, the Knights have provided more than $150 million in donations and more than 47 million hours of hands-on volunteer service, he said.
Some notable charitable projects include support for Special Olympics, scholarships for seminarians, and funds to rebuild churches in the Middle East and other aid for persecuted Christians both there and in countries like Nigeria.
In addition to financial aid, the Knights of Columbus have in the past advocated for persecuted Christians before the U.S. government, sending researchers to Iraq in 2016 to compile a 300-page report on the crimes of the Islamic State against Christians in the country.
The Knights announced a new initiative in mid-2020 to report on Christian persecution in Nigeria, where at least 60,000 Christians have been killed in the past two decades. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation and the demographics overall are almost evenly split between Christians and Muslims.
The Knights are also working on a shrine to St. Kateri Tekakwitha in Gallup, New Mexico, and in July, Knights in South Dakota led a pilgrimage to the burial site of Servant of God Nicholas Black Elk, a revered Lakota medicine man and Catholic.
In discussing the Knights’ charitable work, Kelly focused strongly on the Knights’ response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“This was not our first pandemic. Father McGivney died during a pandemic less than a decade after our founding. A century ago, the Knights of Columbus confronted the Spanish Flu and emerged even stronger,” Kelly noted.
“This pandemic will be no different. Our duty was clear from the start. When loss and suffering struck our parishes and communities, the Knights responded, with service and sacrifice.”
In sum, Knights donated nearly $7.7 million to community and parish projects, Kelly said, as well as 1.2 million pounds of food, and almost a quarter million pints of blood. Through the Knights’ life insurance programs, the organization paid more than $524 million in death benefits, of which approximately $35 million was related to COVID.
Kelly highlighted several projects undertaken by local chapters during the pandemic, including donations to the Little Sisters of the Poor, and donations of truckloads of food worth more than $335,000 to the Acoma, Navajo, and Zuni nations in New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah.
He also highlighted the Knights’ pro-life activities, including sponsoring numerous Marches for Life across North America. Kelly also highlighted the Knights’ Ultrasound Initiative, which since 2009 has placed more than 1,400 ultrasound machines in pregnancy resource centers.
In terms of policy goals, Kelly reiterated the Knights’ strong support for the Hyde Amendment, federal policy since 1976 that prohibits funding of most elective abortions in Medicaid. This summer, the appropriations committee of the US House of Representatives advanced a funding bill without including the usual prohibitions on abortion funding.
At the time, Kelly called the elimination of Hyde “an extreme measure” that “is not what most Americans want and is out of step with our democracy. We urge Congress to preserve provisions like the bipartisan Hyde Amendment that ban the use of taxpayer funding for abortions and affirm the desire of the American public.”
Kelly also urged prayers for a favorable decision in an upcoming Supreme Court case over Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, which if allowed to come into force could open the door for states to ban abortion before the age of viability.
The Knights’ life insurance program has $116 billion in life insurance in force. Its asset advisors program provides Catholic social teaching-compliant investment services to individuals and institutions and manages over $26 billion in assets.
In 2019, the organization launched the Knights of Columbus Charitable Fund, whereby donors can set aside money to benefit charities aligned with Catholic teaching. Last year, the Charitable Fund enabled donors to grant more than $1.9 million to charities around the world.
Kelly urged all Knights to pray for Blessed McGivney’s intercession. He also urged prayers to Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas and of the Knights.
The Knights’ virtual convention continues Wednesday, beginning with an awards session and culminating with a memorial Mass.
A message from Pope Francis, read during the opening Mass, included the pope’s gratitude for the Knights’ “unfailing support of our Christian brothers and sisters experiencing persecution for the sake of the Gospel,” as well as their “manifold charitable activities” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
[…]
As a back-bleacher observer, yours truly claims no special insights nor credentials on when Gaza or any war remains a “just war,” or not.
It might be also that Just-War theory, itself—which assumes disruption between symmetrically conflicting claims—is not up to our surreal situation? Beginning probably with total mobilization and universal conscription under Napoleon and certainly amplified by technological multiplier in the 20th Century.
There were 78 million deaths in the Second World War. And, two/thirds of these were civilians.
The same ratio as in Gaza when we consider that maybe 12,000 of the 35,000 or so are Hamas militants. And, considering that the stated Hamas endgame is to not only defeat Israel, but to push it into the sea. Annihilation. The invoked “integrity of language” versus terrible power of words (as also in 1941 and the cross-culturally incoherent: “unconditional surrender”?).
How to even begin to weigh proportionality? Or, as in another early instance, the reasonable chance of success?
At the front end of the Second World War an isolated Poland accepted the solitary burden of going to war against Hitler, “…despite the clear inferiority of her military and technological forces. At that moment the Polish authorities judged that this was the only way to defend the future of Europe [!] and the European spirit [!]” (John Paul II, “Memory and Identity,” Rizzoli, 2005, p. 141).
Does a fireman negotiate with a fire?
And, yet, four years after the treachery of Pearl Harbor (or, now, after October 7, 2023?), President Truman was horrified at his (non-precision) atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He declared “that there would be no more atomic bombing, that the idea of killing another 100,000 people was too horrible” (notes from the Wallace Diary, August 10, 1945); and “I couldn’t help but think of the necessity of blotting out women, children and noncombatants” (Speech to the Grid Iron Dinner, Dec. 15, 1945).
SUMMARY: The “vision of a peaceful world,” and the boundaries of defensive warfare? Surreal mathematics for at least two centuries?
The way to determine proportionality is according to the test in the English case of Bank Mellat v HM Treasury [2013] UKSC 39, to which no objection can be taken on any ground of divine law:
(1) whether the objective of the measure is sufficiently important to justify the limitation of a protected right, (2) whether the measure is rationally connected to the objective, (3) whether a less intrusive measure could have been used without unacceptably compromising the achievement of the objective, and (4) whether, balancing the severity of the measure’s effects on the rights of the persons to whom it applies against the importance of the objective, to the extent that the measure will contribute to its achievement, the former outweighs the latter…. In essence, the question at step four is whether the impact of the rights infringement is disproportionate to the likely benefit of the impugned measure.
Adapting to the case of war, the test in relation to a claim of jus in bello is: (1) whether the military objective is sufficiently important to justify acts which kill protected persons and destroy protected property, (2) whether the measure is rationally connected to the objective, (3) whether a less lethal and destructive measure could have been used without unacceptably compromising the achievement of the military objective, and (4) whether, balancing the severity of the measure’s effects on protected persons and property against the importance of the objective, to the extent that the measure will contribute to its achievement, the former outweighs the latter. The application of these tests determine that an act is either a war crime or a lawful act of war.
The Holy Land Catholic leaders for statement on “just war”, and that Israel’s use of armed force is disproportionate and therefore unjust is thus wholly indefensible.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation has always maintained in its Charter of 1968, “Article 2: Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.” This is perfectly consistent with the rule of “uti possidetis juris”, which dictates that the boundaries of a state emergent on the territory hitherto of a Non-Self-Governing Territory, a League of Nations Mandate, a United Nations Trust Territory, or a member of a federation that ceases to exist politically, shall be the pre-existing administrative boundaries.
The State of Israel proclaimed on 14 May 1948 immediately acquired full sovereign title to the whole of what had been Mandate Palestine, such that recognition of its title to any part of the territory entails recognition of its title to the whole.
On 15 May 1948 several armies of Arab states invaded the territory of Israel for the purpose of destroying its political independence together with its Jewish population – this fact discloses the responsibility of Arab states – and of the Islamic Republic of Iran from 1979 – for a war of aggression of the highest degree of gravity, and which has a continuing character to this day save in relation to Egypt and Jordan, which ceased participation in 1979 and 1994 respectively.
The occupation by Egypt and Jordan of territory formerly belonging to Mandate Palestine was illegal and incapable of derogating from its status as integral parts of the State of Israel, and was incombatible with the provision of the 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations And Co-Operation Among States in Accordance With the Charter Of The United Nations (GAR 2625) adopted On 24 October 1970: “ No territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal.”
By the end of 1950, Arabs resident in territories occupied by Jordan were offered and given Jordanian citizenship, and they and their descendants remain Jordanian citizens in law – they thereby ceased to have standing to claim self-determination as Palestinians with respect to any state other than Jordan, or to any territory located to the west of the Jordan.
In general, no person of Palestinian identity may, in pursuing a claim of self-determination, use means amounting to collaboration with a state or states waging aggressive war, let alone for the purpose, pubclicly stated by Hamas, of putting the Jews to genocide both in Israel and elsewhere and of establishing the false and blasphemous religion of Islam as the public religion of the state to the extreme endangerment of the salvation of souls.
The stated purpose of Israel’s resort to war is the destruction of Hamas as a polical and military force and the protection of the population of Israel from genocidal acts which, under the law of Israel of 1950, carry the death penalty. Further legitimate aims are the reintegration of the national territory of Israel and the extirpation of the political and military expression of “the diabolical sect of the reprobate and faithless Mahomet” (cf. Pope Callixtus III).
The means used by Israel in pursuit of these aims are rationally connected to them and amount to lawful acts of war and not to any war crimes provable on the facts that: (1) Hamas combatants disguise themselves as non-combatant civilians thereby placing on the Prosecutor the burden to prove that an apparent civilian was taking no active part in hostilities; and (2) the ratio of civilian to combatant fatalities in the population of Gaza is one to one, far below the norm of nine to one consistent with the lawful use of force in urban warfare – thus, the ratio is not so far in excess of the norm as to enable proof of criminal acts amounting to war crimes, crimes against humanity.