The Order of the Knights of Columbus…

The Order of the Knights of Columbus is prospering by the time of the first annual convention in 1884.

In the five councils throughout Connecticut, there are for hundred and fifty-nine members.

Groups from other states are requesting information.

The Knights of Columbus had been founded by an Irish-American Catholic priest, the Venerable Father Michael J. McGivney in New Haven, Connecticut, who had gathered a group of men from St. Mary's parish for an organizational meeting on October 2, 1881; the Order had been incorporated under the laws of the U.S. state of Connecticut on March 29, 1882.

Though the first councils were all in that state, the Order will spread throughout New England and the United States in subsequent years.

The primary motivation for the Order is to be a mutual benefit society.

As a parish priest in an immigrant community, McGivney sees what could happen to a family when the breadwinner dies, and wants to provide insurance to care for the widows and orphans left behind.

He had had to temporarily leave his seminary studies to care for his family when his father died.

In the late nineteenth century, Catholics are regularly excluded from labor unions and other organizations that provide social services.

In addition, Catholics are either barred from many of the popular fraternal organizations, or, as in the case of Freemasonry, forbidden from joining by the Catholic Church itself.

McGivney wished to provide them an alternative.

He also believed that Catholicism and fraternalism were not incompatible and wished to found a society that would encourage men to be proud of their American-Catholic heritage.

McGivney had traveled to Boston to examine the Massachusetts Catholic Order of Foresters and to Brooklyn to learn about the recently established Catholic Benevolent League, both of which offer insurance benefits.

He had found the latter to be lacking the excitement he thought was needed if his organization were to compete with the secret societies of the day.

He had expressed an interest in establishing a New Haven Court of the Foresters, but the charter of Massachusetts Foresters had prevented them from operating outside their Commonwealth.

The committee of St. Mary's parishioners which McGivney had assembled had then decided to form a club that was entirely original.

McGivney had originally conceived of the name "Sons of Columbus", but James T. Mullen, who would become the first Supreme Knight, had successfully suggested that "Knights of Columbus" would better capture the ritualistic nature of the new organization.

The name of Columbus had also ben partially intended as a mild rebuke to Anglo-Saxon Protestant leaders, who uphold the explorer (a Catholic Genovese Italian working for Catholic Spain) as an American hero, yet simultaneously seek to marginalize recent Catholic immigrants.

In taking Columbus as their patron, they are sending the message that not only can Catholics be full members of American society, but had, in fact, been instrumental in its foundation.