"That they are pouring into our land as immigrants at the rate of two millions a year. "That Knights of Columbus declare they will make popery dominant in the United States. "Let us arouse the people and save our country as the beacon light of constitutional liberty and the hope of the world." Among the methods used by propagandists of the Ku Klux Klan in enlisting recruits by means of attacks on the Catholic Church is a certain bogus oath purporting to be the obligation assumed by members of the Fourth Degree of the Knights of Columbus. This oath first made its appearance in this country in 1912, and was widely circulated by anti-Catholics. In 1913, in a contested election case involving a seat in Congress from Pennsylvania, Eugene C. Bonniwell, himself a Catholic, filed charges with a Congressional Committee that this alleged oath had been circulated by his opponent Thomas S. Butler, who denied that he had been responsible for such circulation and had urged his followers that they refrain from circulating the oath. Purely as a matter of a legal exhibit, a copy of this "oath" was ordered printed in the Congressional Record, February 15, 1913. The document as given in the Congressional Record reads as follows: "KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS OATH. FOURTH DEGREE "I, -- ---- ----, now in the presence of Almighty God, the blessed Virgin Mary, the blessed St. John the Baptist, the Holy Apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, and all the saints, sacred host of Heaven, and to you, my Ghostly Father, the superior general of the Society of Jesus, founded by St. Ignatius Loyola, in the pontification of Paul the III, and continued to the present, do by the womb of the Virgin, the matrix of God, and the rod of Jesus Christ, declare and swear that His Holiness, the Pope, is Christ's vice-regent and is the true and only head of the Catholic or Universal Church throughout the earth; and that by virtue of the keys of binding and loosing given his Holiness by my Saviour, Jesus Christ, he hath power to depose heretical kings, princes, States, Commonwealths, and Governments and they may be safely destroyed. Therefore to the utmost of my power, I will defend this doctrine and His Holiness's right and custom against all usurpers of the heretical or Protestant authority whatever, especially the Lutheran Church of Germany, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and the now pretended authority and Churches of England and Scotland, and the branches of same now established in Ireland, and on the Continent of America and elsewhere, and all adherents in regard that they may be usurped and heretical opposing the sacred Mother Church of Rome. "I do now denounce and disown any allegiance as due to any heretical king, prince, or State, named Protestant or Liberals, or obedience to any of their laws, magistrates, or officers.