Following the Knights of Columbus Money Trail

This week’s news is about a more insidious form of Catholic fundraising.  Insidious because it is not immediately apparent that donations are being used to thwart marriage equality plans.  In the National Catholic Reporter, columnist Nicole Sotelo has explored some of the tricky methods used by the Knights of Columbus to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in the anti-marriage equality campaign:

“In 2008 and 2009, the Supreme Knight’s charitable report shows the organization gave more to “family life” projects than they did to “community projects.” On the surface this sounds benign, but “family life” is the Knights’ terminology for predominantly anti-gay initiatives, whereas “community projects” represents soup kitchens and food pantries.

“Among the ‘community projects,’ the Knights contributed $5,000 to disaster relief in Indiana and $3,000 to the community soup kitchen in New Haven, Conn., where the organization is headquartered, according to the 2010 Annual Report of the Supreme Knight. This deserves applause, until you learn that under the same category of ‘community projects,’ they financed a $530,000 contribution to the Becket Fund, an organization of politically controversial lawyers. Do these lawyers really need the Knights’ charity?”

As the years go by, the totals increase.  Sotelo reports that in 2009 and 2010:

“. . .the Knights donated almost $1.2 million to fund the bishops’ newly created committee that works against equal protection for gays and lesbians and dubbed it ‘charity’ in their annual report.”

I am not surprised that the Knights of  Columbus are working against marriage equality, but I am surprised that their public reporting of these funds is so ambiguous.

Sotelo raises several important questions about the Knights’ activities in her column, and I encourage all to read it in its entirety. You can access it here.  Reading it raised two more questions for me:  1) Why are the Knights reluctant to acknowledge the true purpose of these funds?; 2) Are the rank and file members of the Knights aware of how their donations are being used?

–Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry