Knights of Columbus Council 8521 St Joseph Catholic Church - Honey Creek 25781 Hwy 46 West Spring Branch TX 78070-3613
KC Officers for 2018-2019 Spetember 2018 Newsletter
Grand Knight Hal B. Lane III 830-980-6848 Pope Francis: ‘Christianity Deputy Grand Knight Tom Brod 210-392-9839 threatened by rampant relativism’ Financial Secretary Joe Vocks 830-885-4340 By Devin Watkins The Holy Father Chancellor James Sulak Speaking to made the comments 210-649-7904 Treasurer participants in the in a speech on Friday Matt Wohlfeil 830-388-6296 General Chapter of the to the Oblates of St. Recorder Paul Barton Oblates of St. Joseph Joseph (OSJ) who are 830-743-1677 on Friday, Pope gathered in Rome for Advocate Greg Canfield Francis says the their General 830-438-8266 Warden Christian faith is Chapter. Carl Newton 210-488-7181 threatened by the Inside Guard Ricardo Garcia rampant relativism of The Pope also gave a 210-843-7157 modern society. special greeting to Fr. Outside Guard Hugh Fleming Pope Francis says we Jan Pelczarski, the 210-381-3275 Chaplain live in times of Order’s new Superior Rev. Francis McHugh 210-824-0139 “rampant relativism General, and to Fr. Trustee 1st Year Rudy Gonzales that undermines the Michele Piscopo, his 210-488-5431 edifice of faith at its outgoing predecessor. Trustee 2nd Year Mike Merta base and strips the 210-995-7220 Trustee 3rd Year very idea of Christian Gilbert Alvarado 210-218-1388 fidelity of its Lecturer Scott Anderson meaning.” 409-344-1124 Pope Francis: ‘Christianity threatened by rampant relativism’ Intolerant rationalism and rampant relativism
Pope Francis said the Order’s Founder, St. Joseph Marello, lived in a time of rationalism that was intolerant of every spiritual dogma.
Given the similarities with our own culture, the Pope said the Saint’s witness is more relevant than ever.
“Faced with a superficial culture that exalts the possession of material goods and promises happiness through dangerous shortcuts,” he said, the Oblates of St. Joseph, “do not fail to stimulate young people to temper the spirit and to form a mature personality, capable of strength but also tenderness.”
St. Joseph’s example
Pope Francis invited the Oblates to follow the example of their namesake, St. Joseph of Nazareth. He said the Saint lived “a discreet, humble, and hard-working lifestyle”.
“He lived his vocation as the guardian of Mary and Jesus with fidelity and simplicity. He was close to his wife in joyful and difficult moments, and established, along with her, a marvelous familiarity with Jesus, whom he had continually before his eyes.” Pope Francis: ‘Christianity threatened by rampant relativism’ The Holy Father then pointed out that St. Joseph’s virtues are a model for the Oblates.
“Humility”, the Pope said, “attracts the Father’s goodness; intimacy with the Lord, which sanctifies all Christian work; and, silence and contemplation, united with zeal and hard work to advance the Lord’s will.”
Pope Francis summed up how the Oblates are to live with their Founder’s words: “Be Carthusian monks in the house and apostles outside.”
Who are the Oblates of St. Joseph?
The Oblates of Saint Joseph are a religious Institute of priests and brothers whose principle apostolate is to work with young people and the poor. Founded in 1878, the Oblates have communities in at least 12 countries, and are involved the education and catechesis of young people, parish ministry, as well as serving the underprivileged and orphanages.
Pope Francis prayed that the “two Josephs, the Universal Church’s Patron and your Founder” make their General Chapter fruitful and sustain the Institute’s mission. A Message from our Worthy Grand Knight Brother Knights
Another month is gone and we are starting out the fiscal year in good fashion. On the 20th, we held our First Degree Ceremony at St. John Hall. I am proud to announce we have added Dominique Greydanus, Jacob Riggs, Michael Bubb and Steven Torres to our Council as First Degree Knights. Let us all welcome them with open arms and help them move forward with their continued journey to full Knighthood. Only 10 more to go, gentlemen!
We had a very good turnout at our last Council Meeting. Raffle tickets for the BBQ Trailer were presented and many Knights took up the mission to hit the road as salesmen. In order for this to be successful, we need everyone’s help in selling these tickets. As stated previously, Supreme will match us dollar for dollar in raising the needed funds for a new ultrasound machine, which will be donated to the Bulverde Spring Branch Pregnancy Center. Thank you for your time and help. If you need more tickets or looking to start selling tickets, contact DGK Tom Brod. He can hook you up with as many as you can sell.
I pray everyone had a great summer, spent time with loved ones, enjoyed their vacations and took time to just sit back and enjoy life, thanking God for each and every day he gives us on His Earth.
I look forward to facing the challenges that lie ahead, knowing I have my Brother Knights to lend a helping hand when needed.
May God Bless each and every one of you for your hard work and commitment to Council 8521.
In His Service
Vivat Jesus
Viva Cristo Rey
Hal Lane GK, SK The Newly Defined “Dark Ages” of Christian America
By Mr. Jason Craig Recently Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of The Little House has been de-throned from a literary award due to some insensitive remarks about Native Americans in her books. Many have commented well about the problem of reading history and literature from a strictly modern perspective, but the more interesting thing to me is that this is another example of modern liberal Americans showing themselves to be the enlightened pure ones and their somewhat recent ancestors as dark embarrassments – especially the colonial and religious sorts. Southern? Oh tear that man down! Despite America’s deeply religious underpinnings and history, there’s a desire to purge such memories and facts, define them as objectively depraved, and move on to progress and stuff like that. The fact is, there’s more to the story, like there’s more to Wilder than her purported racism, but it’s part of the redefining of things that is all the rage. The Newly Defined “Dark Ages” of Christian America There’s a striking resemblance between today’s defining of the “dark ages” of Protestant America and how “Enlightenment” thinkers and Protestants defined all things between the early Church and Greco-Roman culture as “dark.” The very name “Enlightment” comes from this. They bestowed upon themselves the name because they saw themselves as pretty smart and special, but they knew they had to build on something, so they reached back in history and claimed the Greco-Roman arts and culture as their heritage. There was Plato and Socrates and other cool guys, then a “dark” period, which was them, and then a “light” period, which is us! Vioala, en- light-enment. Light, dark, light. That darkness, or course, is the Catholic Church and her tyranny on thought and science and stuff like that. Meanies. But, this gives you a fresh start and makes it so you don’t have to deal with your inherited baggage. You just say “these are bad guys who did bad things” as loudly and often as possible and praise yourself (and the other good- before-the-bad-people).
The Native American societies, in the new version of dark ages, are the near perfect image of humanity, then there’s some darkness, and now there’s us, the pure and illuminated ones that surely would not have been mean and stuff if we lived back then. It was American Protestants that did all the bad things. The life of the Native Americans was nearly Utopian, and we are like them. They had herbal remedies and we have essential oils. They took care of each other and we want universal health care. They lived on the land and we have Whole Foods. See? They were great because they were like us. That is… until the bad guys – the “dark age.” The Newly Defined “Dark Ages” of Christian America
The liberal America of today sees their own purity in thought and practice as impeccable – they don’t judge and aren’t mean and just want good stuff for everyone. They are the Enlightened ones. “We are diverse! We have good education, fair trade coffee, and clean teeth. Our relativism and reliance on science alone keeps us from being extremists, and we’re basically balanced and happy. The only Americans that might have been better were, of course, Native Americans.”
We Catholics know there’s more to the story, because there’s more to ours than frequently presented. Many converts to Catholicism from secularism and Protestantism find their way into the Church by looking around the sort of historical iron curtain of “the Dark Ages.” You see, if your core identity begins in either the Enlightenment or the Protestant Reformation, there’s a requirement that the Catholic Church be wrong and ugly in her very essence, a distortion of and danger to truth. To look beyond just that fact, to peek behind the curtain, or to acknowledge some nuance in history, is to flirt with danger. The Newly Defined “Dark Ages” of Christian America Bl. John Henry Newman felt this, and part of his conversion was the famous line that to go deep into history is to cease to be Protestant, because, as he said, there is unavoidable fact of the Church’s presence and witness, and the Church’s witness and sanctity is impossible to ignore when you really look. But that’s the point: defining and dismissing the Church keeps your identity strong, so it’s a requirement. You have to keep up the disdain for the Church or your identity crumbles. But, as Newman said, quoting a line from the Song of Songs (and also an antiphon in the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which is where I think he latched on to it): “Who is she that appears like the dawn, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array” (Songs 6:10). The Newly Defined “Dark Ages” of Christian America
As a Catholic, the sweeping characterizations of a millennia and a half into a definitively “dark” period is more than irritating, and much of it gets packaged up into bite size insults that even in themselves are misunderstandings or mis- characterizations – “crusades! Inquisition! Selling indulgences!” What the convert discovers is that you cannot arrive at the very place and possibility of Europe without the fact of the Catholic Church. Progressivism sees all things new and modern as good and most or all things old, because they are old, as bad. The caricatures of what came before allow the new club to exist unmolested because you blind yourself to and ignore the reality of what actually existed in all of its complications, subtlety, and fact. And you dislodge yourself from it. The fact is, there is no now without then, and there is an unavoidable debt that you owe your ancestors. Enlightenment thinkers and the explosion of the physical sciences needed the philosophical realism of Catholic philosophy to flourish. Books from ancient culture worth studying did not just appear, but were stored in monastery libraries. The unity and order of the guilds helped rid Christendom of chattel slavery (until it got resurrected). The Newly Defined “Dark Ages” of Christian America
In full disclosure, I am consistently appalled as I learn about what happened to Native Americans. It is indisputable fact that the land we live on was and is raped for profit. But I am not naive enough to think all before was perfect, that the Protestant Christianity of America was always and everywhere evil and dark, and we are now in a period of unquestionable light. Native Americans had slaves, wars, and objectively evil practices too. Colonialists were not all ravenous gold diggers. There’s just more to the story than that, and the fact is the very existence of today’s liberal society requires and depends on the fact of what came before. It cannot be undone. You can say you’re an independent freedom fighter, but you’re still living off granddad’s reserves.
As Enlightenment thinkers failed to recognize that it was monasteries that had preserved learning and books through essentially secular turmoil after the fall of Rome, so too today’s liberal fails to see and acknowledge their own inheritance from the America they now live in. You can’t live in a hip flat and drink imported coffee from Ikea mugs and claim some pure line from Native Americans. What you have and who you are is an inheritance that must be accepted, and cannot be flatly and totally dismissed in a way that makes you able to take all the spoils of what came before but somehow be prelapsarian and untainted. For those that have gone more radical in some sort of protesting, off-grid subsistence existence… maybe you have more to say. For the weak and whiny – get off your high horse. The Newly Defined “Dark Ages” of Christian America
But, as a Catholic, I have bad news for you American Protestants that feel unfairly dismissed and denigrated. When people’s concepts of themselves require that you be a bad guy, don’t go looking for sympathy – most won’t be interested in your apologetics. Oh, and by the way, a lot happened between the book of Acts and 2017. I’d like to talk to you about it.
Jason Craig is the Senior Editor of Those Catholic Men. He works and writes from a small farm in rural NC with his wife Katie and their five kids. Jason is the Vice President of Program for Fraternus and runs a farm retreat house for boys and men called St. Joseph’s Farm. He holds a master’s degree from the Augustine Institute. He is known to staunchly defend his family’s claim to have invented bourbon. Michael E Bubb
Dominique J Greydanus
Jacob R Riggs
Steven W Torres
Congratulations on completing your 2nd & 3rd Degrees Michael E Bubb September Birthdays
Gerald E Beckmann Len E Brammeier Carlos A Bueno Gerard G Couvillion Micahel W Fadden Dominique J Greydanus Stephen L Hanshaw Ronald A Herrera Dean A Hofer George W Irving, IV Raymond L Keller James R Klar Benito Madera Thomas R Mellene Larry L Pollock Richard Ramirez Moises P Ramon Joseph T Vocks Johnny H Waclawczyk Jr William R White Geoffrey W Young FINANCIAL SECRETARY REPORT FOR September 1, 2018 Total Membership : 218 which includes 74 Insurance, 12 Honorary and 28 Honorary Life Awards Program
11 Sep 3rd – Labor Day
Sep 8th – Nativity of the Blessed Virgin
Sep 8th – Fall exemplification – Dallas
Sep 11th – Patriot Day
Sep 12th - Council Meeting, St. Johns Hall 7p.m
Sep 17th – 1st degree exemplification rehearsal, St. Johns hall
Sep 19th - Officers Meeting, St. Johns Hall 7p.m
Sep 28th – Clergy and religious appreciation dinner Oct 8th – Columbus day
Oct 10th - Council Meeting, St. Johns Hall 7p.m
Oct 13th – Public Solicitation Drive for Charity
Oct 15th - 1st degree exemplification, St. Johns hall
Oct 17th - Officers Meeting, St. Johns Hall 7p.m
Oct 18th – Admissions Degree, Host 9967
Oct 19th – Annual Bishop Thomas J. Flanagan Knights of Columbus retreat
Oct 27th – Knights of Columbus October dance, St. Johns Hall Recommended books for Men
Strength in Simplicity: The Busy Catholic's Guide to Growing Closer to God by : Bishop Emmanuel De Gibergues
Author Emmanuel de Gibergues explores the virtue of simplicity — that is, having the single intention of pleasing God in all that you do. You'll learn what a difference simplicity can make for you — as it did for our Lord and our Lady. You'll come to recognize the signs of true simplicity and find out how to practice simplicity toward God and in your life's activities. Even better, you'll find the secrets of practicing simplicity within yourself — a deceptively difficult spiritual discipline that de Gibergues makes easy here. State Council News
Terry Simonton, PSD was elected to the Supreme Board as the New Supreme Director to Texas.
PSD Simonton served as State Deputy for the fraternal years 2014-2016 and IPSD for the fraternal years 2016-2018. The announcement was made at the Supreme Nationl Convention in Baltimore. He is pictured with State Deputy T. Mark Evans.
PSD Simonton will replace PSD Javier Martinez who died during the Spring and whose term expired. All of the Brother Knights in the State of Texas heartily congratulate and pray for Terry and Estelle. Insurance Q & A
Do I need life insurance? Yes, the chances are you do need life insurance, whether it’s for paying funeral expenses, replacing income, providing money for your child’s education, protecting your home or many other reasons. Unfortunately, too many people don’t know the value of a life insurance policy and go without any or adequate coverage.
Is the Knights of Columbus financially strong? Yes. The Order is one of the strongest organizations from which you can purchase insurance, as assessments by independent evaluators consistently show. Our margin of safety is among the best in the industry. The Knights of Columbus annually receives the highest ratings given by the A.M. Best Company and Standard & Poor’s.
What exactly are dividends? Dividends are the divisible surplus the Order has left over after paying expenses and setting aside the necessary amounts to assure that future benefits are fully funded. Dividends develop from favorable experience, such as people living longer than expected or from interest earnings higher than those guaranteed in their policy. Remember, the payment of dividends cannot be guaranteed.
If I have questions about my insurance policy, or have an interest in learning more about the products the Order offers, whom should I ask? Your professional Knights of Columbus agent can answer any questions you may have. Even if you are not currently a policyholder, a field agent, who is also a brother Knight is available to meet with you at your convenience the needs of you and your family. To identify your agent, call 1-800-345- KOFC (1-800-345-5632).