Michael J. McGivney, an American Catholic priest, founded the Knights of Columbus in New Haven, Connecticut. He gathered a group of men from St. Mary’s Parish for an organizational meeting on October 2, 1881. It was incorporated on March 29, 1882. McGivney had originally conceived of the name “Sons of Columbus”. James T. Mullen, who later led the organization, coined the name “Knights of Columbus”, which expressed the ritualistic nature of the new organization and drew from positive historical associations.
From the earliest days of the Order, members wanted to create a form of hierarchy and recognition for senior members; this issue was discussed at the National Meeting of 1899. As early as 1886, Supreme Knight James T. Mullen had proposed a patriotic degree with its own symbolic dress. From these discussions, the Fourth Degree was created, joining the three previous degrees on charity, unity, and fraternity.
About 1,400 members attended the first exemplification of the Fourth Degree at the Lenox Lyceum in New York on February 22, 1900. The event was infused with Catholic and patriotic symbols, imagery that “celebrated American Catholic heritage”. The two knights leading the ceremony, for example, were the Expositor of the Constitution and the Defender of the Faith. The ritual soon spread to other cities. The new Fourth Degree members returned to their councils, forming assemblies composed of members from several councils. Those assemblies chose the new members.
In 1903, the Board of Directors officially approved a new degree exemplifying patriotism Order-wide, using the New York City model. The Order had a “desire to receive within its ranks only the best” and intended the men should be practicing Catholics. As one measure, each candidate was required to submit a certificate from his parish priest attesting that he had received Holy Communion within the past two weeks.
Fourth degree members belong to one of 3,109 assemblies, including 75 created in 2012. The first assembly in Europe was established in 2012, and in 2013 a new assembly for Boston-area college councils was created at Harvard University. As of 2013 there were 335,132 Fourth Degree members, including 15,709 who joined the ranks of the Patriotic Degree the year before.
In its early days, it worked to counter the bias that good Catholics could not be good Americans. The early Fourth Degree ceremony stressed the contributions Catholics from many countries had made to the United States and had Catholic citizenship as its theme.[1]
[1] – Summarized from a History of the Knights of Columbus