We have a resolution in the story that the Salem, Mass., Knights of Columbus were renting their hall to vampires for a blood-soaked, blasphemous event around Halloween. My pastor, who is the council’s new chaplain, tells me that the Knights cancelled the event this past Tuesday, saying they’d been duped by the organizers who told them it was going to be a simple fundraiser for a charity. It appears that the deception went much deeper though.
Here’s a little background: Last year, the council agreed to rent its hall out to a commercial group called Festival of the Dead. It’s a company owned by a couple of witches here in Salem that puts on occult events in the month of October. When word got out of the rental, an outcry went up and the Knights cancelled it. That left the organizers of the festival angry. Now, the Grand Knight of the council claims that the witches secretly arranged to have the vampire ball rent out the hall under false pretenses so that they could then denounce the Knights as hypocrites, which they did with letters they sent to all local news organizations as well as a number of national Catholic news outlets, including my own Catholic World News. Part of the letter is reproduced in earlier blog entry. In other words, it was done as a matter of revenge.
The lesson here is that the Knights need to do a better job of ensuring their Catholic identity is not compromised by vetting all hall rentals, especially around Halloween here in Salem, and to remember that they’re not primarily real estate landlords, but a Catholic men’s fraternal organization.
