K of C is a weird group, they tried to get my brother. They invited him to a meeting, and warned him to never tell of the secrets that he might see. He just laughed and said, "what, that you are just a lodge with people wearing funny hats and having secret handshakes, etc?" He thought they were just a bunch of weird old guys with hat and uniform fetishes.
A few weeks ago a good friend of mine died, known him since kindergarten at Catholic grade school. He was a high muckety muck in the K of C. The funeral wasn't as weird (due to Covid) as I expected, but they had some honor guard with swords and berets and spiffy weird costumes... We used to joke about the Knights, he was uber devout Catholic, I wasn't. I did Catholic high school, he didn't, I wonder if he would have been that way if he went to my high school. I sure do miss him, he was a hell of a guy.
Very sorry to read of your loss of your lifelong friend. I only flirted with Catholic education, one year of high school, that was plenty. Half the faculty were brothers.
I did however, come away with a new insight into the "pecking order" of the R. Catholics who committed themselves to "life in Christ". Before that one year, I assumed
priesthood was the standard vocation males were all "called to", as the description of recruitment went. Priests drove Buicks or European sports cars, had housekeepers in their spacious, parish provided residences, officiated at baptisms, weddings, and funerals, and were free to accept a strong drink or several at any or all of such events.
At the Catholic high school, the faculty were of an order of Catholic brothers, they resided together in a dormitory on campus, owned no vehicles or for that matter, much of anything else because they committed to three oaths, just as nuns did. I became aware that parish priests take only two oaths, chastity and obedience.
There seemed to be many more nuns and brothers than there were parish priests. The humble demeanors and communal living disarmed the ingrained fear of socialism 1960s Americans were routinely injected with.
So, I was much more impressed with the lives of those who took all three oaths. They seemed to literally live a "life in Jesus", apart from the material world.
Even the parish priests seemed so different from millionaire TV and protestant mega church preachers.
R. Catholic orders should have done a better job of public outreach. The public face is the priests, and there are some orders of priesthood that adopt a life in poverty, too.
This lay Catholic movement helped put in perspective a sense of why we're here and what we should be doing after exposure to Jesus's teachings.
So many in the U.S. are not "free from want" of basic necessities, many more when this Trump pandemic-19 bites its deepest during the coming months.
Dorothy Day - Wikipedia
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As part of the Catholic Worker Movement, Day co-founded the Catholic Worker newspaper in 1933, and served as its editor from 1933 until her death in 1980. In this newspaper, Day advocated the Catholic economic theory of distributism, which she considered a third way between capitalism and socialism.[SUP][7][/SUP][SUP][8][/SUP] Pope Benedict XVI used her conversion story as an example of how to "journey towards faith... in a secularized environment."[SUP][3][/SUP] In an address before the United States Congress, Pope Francis included her in a list of four exemplary Americans who "buil[t] a better future".[SUP][9][/SUP] The Church has opened the cause for Day's possible canonization, which was accepted by the Holy See for investigation. For that reason, the Church refers to her with the title of Servant of God.