The Daughters of Isabella, named for Queen St. Isabella of Portugal, is a female auxiliary to the Knights of Columbus. It was founded in 1897 and had 100,000 members in 1994.
Daughters of Isabella
The
Daughters of Isabella, named for Queen St. Isabella of Portugal,
is a female
auxiliary to the Knights of Columbus.
It was founded
in 1897 and had 100,000 members in 1994.
Much of the work of the Daughters of Isabella is praiseworthy — work with the Red Cross, blood banks, and so on — while some is a matter of opinion (they are strongly opposed to legal abortion) and some is engagingly eccentric, such as a prolonged campaign to have the birthday of Queen St. Isabella (April 22) proclaimed an American national holiday.
As an organization, it has several unusual
qualities. It is
not like most auxiliaries, because women (aged 16 - 59) are
admitted in their
own right instead of as appendages to their menfolk, who belong to
a male-only
organization. There is no life insurance, only a funeral benefit
fund, and
perhaps most surprisingly, there are genuine rituals, with
quarterly passwords
and more — a most un-Catholic undertaking.
Initiation ritual Daughters of
Isabella
Installation ritual Daughters of
Isabella