The Fake Oath

Passed from hand to hand under tables, slipped under doors, sent anonymously through the mails, an old and notorious piece of anti-Catholic propaganda turned up last week in scattered cities and towns, mostly in the South. Part of a spreading anti-Catholic campaign against Presidential Candidate John F. Kennedy, the document purports to be the oath of the Knights of Columbus, a 1,000,000-member fraternal order of Roman Catholic men (Kennedy is a member). Sample quote from one version of the fake oath: * "I do further promise and declare that I will, when opportunity presents, wage relentless war, secretly and openly, against all heretics, Protestants and Masons, as I am directed to do, to extirpate them from the face of the whole earth."

This fraud, like the bogus Protocols of the Elders of Zion used against the Jews, has been spread by bigots for almost half a century. It first turned up in a congressional election in 1912 in a lunatic-fringe tract mailed from Aurora, Mo. The following year, a congressional committee investigating unfair election practices condemned the oath as a fabrication. At that time, the false oath was read into the Congressional Record, a fact that present-day bigots cite to lend it an air of authenticity. Ku Klux Klanners circulated it against Al Smith in 1928. It turned up again last spring during the West Virginia primary battle between Jack Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. A scattering of clergymen have recently quoted it in sermons, and it has been printed in newsletters of Southern Baptist churches in Rainelle, W. Va., Phoenix, Ariz., Greensboro, N.C. and Knoxville, Tenn. One clergyman of the Nazarene Baptist Church, W. L. King, who quoted the oath and refused to retract when its fraud was pointed out to him, last week was charged with criminal libel in the magistrate's court at West View, Pa.

* Full text of the actual "obligation" taken by members of the Knights of Columbus' top Fourth Degree: "I swear to support the Constitution of the "United States. I pledge myself, as a Catholic citizen and a Knight of Columbus, fully to enlighten myself upon my duties as a citizen and conscientiously perform them entirely in the interest of my country, regardless of all personal consequences. I pledge myself to do all in my power to preserve the integrity and purity of the ballot and to promote respect for law and order. I promise to practice my religion consistently and faithfully, and to so conduct myself in public affairs and in the exercise of public virtue as to reflect nothing but credit upon our Holy Church, to the end that she may flourish and our country prosper to the greater honor and glory of God."

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