Atheist Michael Newdow had filed the lawsuit against the school system in Hanover, New Hampshire on behalf of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, in a case that mirrored his earlier lawsuit against schools in and near Sacramento, California.

As with the California case, the Knights of Columbus sought and received permission from the court to become a “defendant intervenor,” allowing attorneys representing the Order (from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty) to participate directly in the court proceedings.

The California case, argued before a panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in December 2007, has still not been decided. Read the New Hampshire court decision.

Read the Knights of Columbus Fact Sheet about the Pledge of Allegiance and recent litigation.

Representatives from Holy Cross Assembly will be with him this weekend at his first provincial meeting in Sterling Heights, Michigan.

Good luck and God Bless!

Phoenix, AZ - Three Catholic television networks and a Catholic satellite radio channel will be providing coverage of the opening day of the 2009 Knights of Columbus annual convention on Tuesday, August 4.

EWTN will broadcast convention proceedings via its cable and satellite affiliates throughout North and South America, Europe, Africa and the Pacific Rim of Asia. News Director Raymond Arroyo will be onsite Tuesday, Aug. 4, with live TV interviews and updates on convention activities. EWTN Radio Network’s Thom Price will also broadcast live from the convention site and provide live audio of the opening Mass and business session.

Canada’s Salt & Light TV will cover the convention events live to its audience of over two million people in Canada alone, and tens of thousands of people the world over viewing the live streaming on the Salt and Light website www.saltandlighttv.org, with English and French-language reports by Basilian Father Thomas Rosica, David Naglieri, Michele Nuzzo, Alicia Ambrosio and Jasmin Lemieux-Lefebvre.

Boston-based CatholicTV returns for its second year of broadcast coverage to its national audience. News anchor Kevin Nelson will provide live reports, activities and interviews from the convention site throughout the opening day’s events.

All three TV outlets will broadcast Men of Faith Who Made a Difference: The Knights of Columbus. This new hour-long documentary chronicles the history of its 127-year history and profiles several of its prominent members and charitable initiatives.

SiriusXM satellite radio’s The Catholic Channel (159) will air Busted Halo with Paulist Father Dave Dwyer on Aug. 3 and 4. Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York will record his weekly program, A Conversation with the Archbishop, hosted by Rob Astorino, from the convention site.

Please check local listings for exact broadcast coverage and times.

Dear Brother Knight:

It is probably fair to say that no other single activity has defined the Knights of Columbus over the past half century as much as the pro-life movement.

Following the shock of the Supreme Court’s decision to preempt all state and federal laws regulating abortion in Roe v. Wade in 1973, we launched a long-term battle to fight legalized abortion. While achieving the ultimate goal of overturning Roe remains somewhere in the future, we have been able to achieve many small successes along the way:

• the Hyde Amendment, which restricts federal funding for abortions;
• the federal law banning partial birth abortions, which was finally upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in April 2007;
• the “Mexico City Policy,” which has barred the use of federal taxpayers’ money to pay for abortions in other countries;
• laws in 44 states that preserve a parental role when children under 18 seek abortions;
• laws in 40 states that restrict late-term abortions;
• laws in 46 states that protect the right of conscience for individual health care providers;
• laws in 27 states that protect the right of conscience for institutions;
• laws in 38 states that ban partial birth abortions;
• laws in 33 states that require counseling before having an abortion;
• and laws in 16 states that provide for ultrasounds before an abortion.

All of these restrictions on abortion – all of the progress we’ve made over the past 35 years in trying to limit and reduce abortions in the United States – would be invalidated with the stroke of a pen if the next Congress passes, and the next president signs, the so-called “Freedom of Choice Act” (FOCA).

Before you cast your vote on Tuesday, please take the time and effort necessary to learn whether candidates for whom you might vote favor or oppose FOCA.

The House sponsors of FOCA are listed here

The Senate sponsors of FOCA are listed here

Obviously, if a candidate in your area is not listed among the sponsors, you may have to ask his or her campaign for their position on FOCA.

We have gathered much additional information about the Freedom of Choice Act, including links to material from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and on life issues generally on a special Knights of Columbus web page:

Remember, all that we’ve done together since Roe to save the lives of the unborn is at stake. Please pass on this message to your pro-life friends.

Supreme Knight Anderson unveils poll in live webcast from Rome

The Knights of Columbus will release the results of a nationwide survey of Catholic voters at a news conference at the National Press Club on Tuesday, October 14, 2008. Supreme Knight Carl Anderson will describe the results via a live satellite hookup from Rome, where he is serving as an auditor for the World Synod of Bishops being held at the Vatican this month.

The poll provides insights into the ways in which Catholic voters differ from the voting public at large, as well as information about differences and similarities between practicing and non-practicing Catholics. It also provides an unusually detailed look at which kinds of abortion restrictions are favored by Catholics and the population at large. And it examines attitudes on a wide range of issues, including the economy, the Iraq war, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, the death penalty, global warming, and school choice.

The survey of 1,733 adults was conducted between September 24 and October 3 by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. An oversample of American Catholics was done to provide statistically significant data on Catholic attitudes during this election year.

Watch the news conference live on the web!

Tuesday’s news conference will be webcast live beginning at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Tuesday, October 14. You can view it either by going to the Knights of Columbus website, www.kofc.org, or at a special URL, www.visualwebcaster.com/catholic-vote-101408

Pass the word to your brother Knights!

“Vote Pro-Life” radio ad begins airing nationwide today

Knights of Columbus spot features beating heart of 10 week old unborn child

New Haven, CT – September 23, 2008 -

A 30 second radio spot encouraging people to “vote pro-life” in the November elections begins running on radio stations around the United States today. It will continue to air until the November 4 election.

The ad features the sound of an unborn baby’s heartbeat at 10 weeks, and the voice of a woman saying, “Listening to this makes me wonder – why would anyone question that her life has begun?” It concludes with the words, “Vote your heart. Vote Pro Life.”

“The fact that the child whose heartbeat we hear is alive is simply a matter of science,” Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson said in announcing the beginning of the ad campaign. “We believe that it is vital that America’s pro-life community make it clear that they will reserve their votes for candidates of either party who are committed to protecting life from conception to natural death.”

Anyone can listen to or download the ad from the Knights of Columbus website, www.kofc.org.

A similar ad is planned for broadcast in Canada, where general elections are set for October 14, 2008.

The Knights of Columbus is the world’s largest lay Catholic organization, with more than 1.75 million members in North and Central America, Asia and Europe. Last year, Knights donated $145 million and more than 68 million hours of volunteer time to charitable causes.

Writing “as a fellow Catholic layman,” Anderson said that “statements that suggest that our Church has anything less than a consistent teaching on abortion are not merely incorrect; they may lead Catholic women facing crisis pregnancies to misunderstand the moral gravity of an abortion decision.”

Anderson noted that the founders of the United States “believed that we are ‘endowed by [our] creator with certain unalienable rights,” and that first among these is ‘life,’” and he appealed to Biden, “as a Catholic who acknowledges that life begins at conception, to resolve to protect this unalienable right.”

“Involved Father” is the new topic. Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, a Catholic psychiatrist, explains why fathers must be involved with their wives and children to fulfill their vocation and achieve personal happiness.

Also featured is a concise article, “8 Habits of Highly Effective Fathers.”

The Fathers for Good Web site also includes:
· A video message from Supreme Knight Carl Anderson
· Podcasts by experts on love, marriage and family life
· Father’s Forum for your comments and questions
· A “Good for Mothers” section
· A ballot to cast your vote for next month’s topic.

Visit www.fathersforgood.org today, and tell all your friends about this new Web site sponsored by the Knights of Columbus!

Knights of Columbus convention delegates adopt resolutions challenging Catholic office-holders on abortion, affirming marriage as union of one man and one woman

(Quebec City, Quebec) – Delegates to the annual international convention of the Knights of Columbus today adopted a resolution opposing “any governmental action or policy that promotes abortion, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, euthanasia, assisted suicide and other offenses against life.”

The delegates also challenged “our fellow Catholics who are elected officials to be true to the faith they claim to profess by acting bravely and publicly in defense of life, affirming with Pope Benedict XVI that ‘there can be no room for purely private religion.’”

The resolution stated that the organization reaffirms its “commitment to building a culture of life by promoting policies that favor the family,” and reaffirmed the organization’s “long standing policy of not inviting to any Knights of Columbus event persons, especially public officials or candidates for public office, who do not support the legal protection of unborn children.”

The resolution on life issues follows by several days the opening convention address by Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson, in which he called on Catholic voters to “stop accommodating pro-abortion politicians,” and encouraged them to “say ‘no’ to every candidate of every political party who supports abortion.”

Delegates also adopted a resolution calling for “legal and constitutional protection . . . for the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.”
The resolution declares that “marriage is a natural institution based on ancient human values that have evolved over time into a unique and deeply rooted social, legal and religious institution,” and that it “reflects the natural biological complementarity between man and woman which predates the state and which is woven into the social and religious fabric of every major culture and society.”

Marriage between man and woman “provides the most favorable environment in which to protect the rights and the best interests of children,” the resolution stated.

Convention delegates adopted resolutions dealing with other public policy issues as well, including building a culture of life, religious liberty, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, decency on the Internet and in the media, Catholic education, and the Pledge of Allegiance.  The texts of all the resolutions can be found at:

http://www.kofc.org/un/eb/en/convention_2008/resolutions/index.html

For complete coverage of convention events, go to the “Convention Central” web page at:

http://www.kofc.org/un/eb/en/convention_2008/index.html