Knights of Columbus State Chaplains Meeting
June 8, 2023
Introduction
First it is good to be together, thanks for taking the time to come to New Haven to meet with the Supreme Knight and his co-workers together with your State Deputies. It is also good for us as Chaplains to meet among ourselves.
In the survey notes that Fr. Kalisch provided me, one of you commented that a very valuable part of these chaplains’ meetings, is learning from one another, learning best practices, focusing on key priorities, and discussing how to overcome various challenges. By having this meeting prior to the Supreme Convention, we allow ourselves ample opportunity to engage in fraternal dialogue, and to do so when we are not as tired as we tend to be at the end of the convention. Besides all that, we have had and will have the opportunity to walk in the footsteps of Blessed Michael McGivney and, together, prayerfully to absorb his spirit of holiness, and his apostolic zeal.
Let us now focus on some key priorities. Any key priority must be true to the original vision of Blessed Michael McGivney. We all know that Father McGivney wanted to help fathers of families to provide for their wives and families in the event of their untimely death, to prevent them from slipping into poverty. And the Order continues to help its members to attain a secure financial future and does so in a manner that is both ethical and effective. So, in our work as chaplains, it is important for us to have a good relationship with our general agents and all those who advance the Knights of Columbus Insurance and Financial Planning programs.
That said, if we look carefully at Blessed Michael McGivney’s life and ministry we will see that his first concern was for the spiritual well-being of the men of his parish. He could see that some if not many of them were on the path to becoming nominal Catholics – practicing the faith sporadically if at all – he could see the challenges of marriage and family life that many of the men of his parish were undergoing and this in an era before easy and frequent divorce. Blessed Michael also understood the pull of the then secular society upon his men, whether it was the the anti-Catholic bigotry that was afoot at the time or the lure of secret societies. With a wise and loving Pastor’s heart, Father McGivney understood the centrifugal forces that threatened the spiritual well-being of the men of his parish. In my opinion, this was Blessed Michael’s most fundamental reason for founding the Knights of Columbus and giving us the principles of charity and unity and later on fraternity. All of this flowed from the holiness of his priestly heart.
Writing in the Waterbury Evening Democrat in June of 1900, Fr. O’Donnell said, “It was Father McGivney’s purpose in instituting the Knights of Columbus, to keep the young men of his parish within the household of the faith, to preserve them from the taint of infidelity…. It was his aim to surround his proteges with an atmosphere of religion and to bring them into even closer relationship to Mother Church.”
That is why I believe that the Cor Initiative is truly a key priority for the Knights of Columbus, not just at Supreme but for our State Deputies and for us as the Chaplains of the Order. You have already heard and read about the Cor Initiative, but our meeting together gives us an opportunity to achieve a common understanding of what it is and why it is important.
So what is it? Well let’s begin with this – it is a monthly meeting conducted at the parish level. While it is open to all the men of the parish, it is directed first and foremost to the Knights in our local councils and those men whom we seek to attract to the Knights of Columbus, especially that younger demographic who are husbands and fathers of young families.
On second thought, Cor is more than a monthly meeting. The goal of these meetings is to provide an opportunity for our fellow Knights and other men to Encounter Christ, or more specifically to encounter the heart of Christ and the immense charity in the depths of his heart. The goal of this initiative is to help our brothers and indeed ourselves to open our hearts to the heart of Christ, to allow his heart to speak to our hearts. This is more than catechetical instruction and more than mere training in morality. These meetings are meant to help us and to help our brothers to go to the heart of the matter, to go toward that which is of greatest importance, namely our relationship with Christ and our relationship with one another in Christ.
Structure
Like every initiative Cor has component parts and like Gaul, it is divided into three parts: Prayer, Formation, Fraternity. This is not your Father’s Knights of Columbus Council meeting!
Prayer is at the heart of everything we do. As we know dear brothers in our own spiritual journey the lifeblood of our relationship with Jesus Christ and our priesthood is daily sustained prayer, including the reverent recitation of the Liturgy of the Hours, Spiritual Reading, and a Holy Hour as well as the Rosary. Yet, the Second Vatican Council highlighted the Church’s constant teaching of the Universal Call to Holiness and Apostolate. While each local council has wide latitude in developing the particular form of prayer to be offered at the Cor meetings, it might be a Holy Hour, lectio divina, the recitation rosary, chaplet of Divine Mercy, or other recognized forms of prayer but since the Mass is the source and summit of the Christian life, I think offering Mass at a Cor meeting now and again could be a very good idea…But you might be thinking long about now that there is nothing particularly new and different about the forms of prayer that I just suggested and that would be true. What I am suggesting is that we offer men formation in how to pray, in the meaning of prayer, in the conditions that make for fruitful prayer, in learning to pray in an honest to God manner. In other words to help them to pray prayers that are familiar to them with fresh eyes and an open heart. This is something more than programmatic, this requires that we open our hearts to the hearts of the men we are trying to reach, just as Fr. McGivney did.
The second dimension of the Cor meeting is formation, that is the formation of our hearts after the hearts of Jesus Christ. Our hearts are limited and sinful yet Christ desires nothing more than to shape our hearts to make them like his own, to take our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh. Put another way, Cor aims to help the men who participate in it to take on the character of Christ, to become like him, to reshape us not just externally but from deep within. To help in this work there are a host of resources that can be used. These would include, the Into the Breach Video Series or my Supreme Chaplain’s Monthly Challenge. It might also take the form of a small group discussion or Bible Study, perhaps talks and conferences by the Council chaplains or reading a spiritual reflection. In my opinion, the reflections that we chaplains offer play an important role in the formation of the hearts and minds of our brothers, more than we realize, especially when we demonstrate that we have some skin in the game, that we too are striving, however, imperfectly to be like Christ, that we are allowing Christ to shape our hearts. Our brothers need to know that we are on the journey with them and we are being formed even as we assist in their formation.
Fraternity – Nobody really practices the faith without support. If that was true in Father McGivney’s day it’s even more true in our day. The men we seek to serve face even more powerful forces of disintegration. In the face of this fraternity takes on even more importance. But not just any fraternity. Father McGivney sought to create a fraternity marked by charity and unity, a fraternity that is virtuous, a fraternity in which men support one another in the quest to become Christ-like. This is not to say that a KofC is the near equivalent of a monastery. Indeed, there should be something truly enjoyable, dare I even say fun, about being together as brothers in Christ, but it needs to go deeper. Men today need to support one another if they are to follow Christ, stay in the Church, and be good husbands and good fathers. Also in this time when the Holy Father has called us to practice synodality, the fraternity of this initiative is truly a means of “journey together”. As priests we are builders of community. If our parishes are not living communities of faith, they are dying. So too in the Cor initiative, we chaplains have the opportunity to build and strengthen a core component of the Church community.
And besides all that, I think this is what men today are looking for and what our parishes need. It’s no secret that there is a great need for us to recruit younger members. Many of our Councils are filled with kind and generous brothers but many if not most of them are older. As you know young men are looking for a faith-centered approach to membership. You see how young fathers are seeking content and fraternity that help them grow in faith and become better men, husbands, and fathers. As pastors yourselves you know, perhaps better than I, what parishes and families need namely for men to grow as faithful leaders and to find means for formation and accountability to help them in that growth.
At one level Cor is amazingly simple. It does not require a massive infrastructure, or a lot of busy work, but it does require something deeper of us as chaplains. One or more of you asked that, given the busyness of most priests, what is the essential, as one put it what “are the non-negotiables” for being a KofC Chaplain. It’s not a question of listing a number of functions that you have to fulfill or tasks you have to complete. What is truly essential is our personal dedication to helping our brothers encounter Christ and then to accompany them on that journey. Parishioners loved Father McGivney because he was authentic. And you were asked to serve as State Chaplains because of your authenticity as a priest. As State Chaplains we need truly to encourage our Council chaplains to understand how deeply many men value their authenticity at priests and how much they have to offer the men entrusted to their care. In other words, among us as chaplains, there need to be “Cor discussions”. In your meetings with Council chaplains it is important to talk, not just organizationally but at this deeper level, this Cor level.
Many of you have asked about various challenges you see in your jurisdictions. How do we encourage the regular practice of the faith, how do we help orient our brother Knights towards evangelization, what are ways that we can more closely connect the work of the Knight with the work of our local parishes, and many other questions and challenges. Of course, there is no such thing as a panacea, a silver bullet, but the Cor initiative provides us a framework in which these and other questions can be addressed effectively. What we all know is this: none of these things will be addressed unless our hearts and the hearts of our men are transformed by a living contact with the heart of Christ. How often have we seen it happen in our ministry as priests that when a community is truly on mission, truly focused on doing the work of the Lord Jesus, all the other challenges that appeared so difficult seem to fade away.
Please allow me to thank you again most sincerely for your service to the Knights of Columbus as State Chaplains I know that you know how important your relationship with your State Deputy is and how important your relationship with local council chaplains is. All this and more takes a lot of time and effort and all of us have many other responsibilities besides, so thank you. If I may ask one further thing of you it would be this: that we redouble our prayers for the canonization of our beloved founder. It would be a mistake to assume that his canonization is “in the bag” – and what great encouragement to us and to our brother priests to have the quintessential parish priest be recognized as a saint. Thank you dear brothers. Vivat Jesus!