My boyfriend wanted to join the Knights. He attended some meetings where they were also trying to recruit younger men and said that all they did after that was hound him to sign up for their life insurance. There was no talk of participation, initiation, or anything of the sort. Might have just been a bad council but he felt like he had encountered the church equivalent of a time share.
A COMMENT ON REDDIT
When I converted to Catholicism, the very next step I made as a new Catholic was to become a Knight of Columbus. No one had to twist my arm because I wanted to be a Knight from the start. I was totally into all of it--the pancake breakfasts, the fish fries, the barbecues, the Tootsie Roll drives, the rummage sales, and the tuxedos and ostrich plumed chapeaus. I had no problem with the secret rituals or the stiff meetings following Robert's Rules of Order. All of the things that supposedly drive away young men was totally fine with me. Of course, I was past age 40 when I converted, so I was already a middle aged boring guy. I liked the Knights just as they were. I was pleased to serve.
I never bought any of the Knights of Columbus insurance or other financial products. I was already covered by a generous life insurance policy through my employer that cost me nothing, but I let the Knights try to sell me on a term plan and choked at the premiums I would have to pay. I would find out later that I was not the only one. But I didn't become a Knight for the insurance. I became a Knight out of a desire to serve and help atone for my wicked years as a virulent atheist. On that score, the Knights delivered.
I was too busy working to pay much attention to what was going on with the Knights on a national level or with my local council. I would show up to meetings to sign up for some new duty. I knew to never try to initiate some project because such things lead to wrangling and byzantine rules and such. I was just a worker bee and remained that way. When you shut up and work, you become popular and liked by the old guys. The reality is that I just didn't have the time to do much else.
My local council was imploding. When I did make it to a meeting, our once thriving council lacked enough men to fulfill the quorum requirements. I remember when those meetings used to be standing room only. The thing literally died before my eyes. To this day, I don't know the full story of our council's collapse. I thought it was something internal to our piece of the Knights of Columbus. Then, I had the accident that put me in the hospital with a traumatic brain injury and out of a job. My own world was too destroyed to pay attention to what was going on with the Knights. I still deal with those personal problems today.
When our council folded, I remember that the insurance agent said we could remain going so long as we had at least one Knight on the insurance. I thought that was an odd thing to say, and it took me some years in my brain damaged state to figure it out. Even as the council was going up in flames, that guy was trying to make a sale. Needless to say, the council vanished which tells me that he never made that sale. From what I can tell, there was not a single Knight in our council who bought the insurance. Otherwise, our council would still exist. This is speculation on my part.
On the national level, the Knights of Columbus decided to get rid of the annual dues, the secret initiation rituals, and the traditional attire of the Fourth Degree in favor of what many deride as the "Girl Scout uniform" with the beret. This was all a lame attempt to attract a younger generation of Knights which mostly alienated the older Knights. I didn't like any of it. I also don't think any of that was what made younger men not want to become Knights.
While all of this was happening both locally and nationally, a men's club sprang up at our parish that did most of the same things that the Knights did. In fact, this club was comprised of many former Knights. These are the same guys who couldn't make the council meetings, but they could attend the activities of this new club. I didn't understand it.
I have not attended anything with this new men's club because I have decided that I am not a joiner anymore. After my brief involvement with the Opus Dei cult and the disaster with the Knights, I decided that I was just going to be a "free agent" and do what I could on an individual level. It also hurts that I refrain from driving unless it is an emergency because I worry that my cognitive issues may put me in a crash. My wife has enough on her plate without having to ferry me to men's club meetings.
Recently, it has become clear to me what happened with the Knights of Columbus. I discovered that a fellow Knight had passed away and belonged to a similar men's club at his new parish in Illinois. I started googling to discover that this was true in many other parishes. They all once had thriving councils of the Knights of Columbus that had either folded or were stumbling towards self-destruction. How did things come to this?
You will find all sorts of postmortems and analysis about the situation on various Catholic forums, but they all get it wrong. The Knights of Columbus are victims of seppuku or the ritual suicide of the samurai in ancient Japan. They are disemboweling themselves in a way that cannot be stopped or survived. The cause of this destruction is plain to see. The fault lies with the insurance company.
Frank Walker at Canon 212 always refers to them derisively as the "Insurance Knights of Columbus." This is because this is what they are. The Knights of Columbus are essentially an insurance company masquerading as a Catholic fraternal order. Enough Knights got fed up with the fiction and decided to do away with it. Now, they have this ad hoc fraternal order of men's clubs to counteract the moribund Insurance Knights of Columbus. Changing from an ostrich hat to a Special Forces beret is not going to change this. And the Knights can't cease being an insurance company until it goes bankrupt. Before that happens, they will inevitably take any customer they can get including women, Protestants, or whatever. The company comes before all else.
I don't think this is what Blessed Father Michael McGivney wanted when he got this thing going. The Knights were intended to counteract the influence of the Freemasons who knew taking care of widows and orphans of their deceased members was good practice that would grow their numbers. Today, I can confidently say that the Knights of Columbus do nothing for their members or their families except try to sign them up for a policy.
Officially, I still remain a Knight. In reality, I get the magazine in the mail and emails from the insurance agent trying to sell me what I will never buy. That's all the Knights are to me now. They are junk mail and spam. I had a good run with them, but that run is over.
The Knights of Columbus are Dying, and THIS is the Problem
