The Knights of Columbus and Prop 8

I had a rough Friday afternoon. I rented 8: The Mormon Proposition.

I devour anything I can find that’s Mormon from parousing lds.org for hours and listening to old Mormon Stories podcasts to reading countless pro and anti-Mormon books. Thinking this documentary would just be another piece of the Mormon puzzle, I didn’t foresee sitting on my couch crying throughout most of the film, which is exactly what happened.

The documentary, which I won’t get completely in to (you can read a great review here), showed a website and a series of videos that were sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and….The Knights of Columbus, an organization that every important man in my life is a part of. When Prop 8 was initially proposed the summer before I started college I assumed that the Catholic Church was involved on some level but to find out that we were sought out and participated so willingly shook me to the core.

More recently I had seen an interview with Anne Rice where she stated that the Catholic Church’s involvement with Prop 8 was a part of the reason she decided to leave. I remember thinking “she’s probably right but I don’t have any proof” so I was able to push the idea aside.

The way the Christian community treats their homosexual brothers and sister has always been a source of great anger, frustration and unhappiness for me. I remember as a junior high student seeing anti-gay protests on the news and not understanding their anger or being able to make sense of the fact that I was a Christian but wasn’t like the Christians I saw on the news.

After seeing that many of these Yes on 8 videos were paid for with tithing dollars I searched around the internet a bit and discovered it was true (not that I thought the documentary was wrong but I wanted more than one source).

So that was Friday and now it’s Sunday and Mass begins in four hours. I’m replaying the movie in my head, thinking about Anne Rice, Marek Bozek and the Vatican rulings on the ordination of women and I’m not sure if I can go to Mass.

I can’t separate the hierarchy from local parishes and priests, state lines and myself. They are all intrinsically interwoven, remember what St. Paul said, what happens to the people of Ireland, California and across the world effects us all.