May 31, 2012 / 01:15 am
The Knights of Columbus and several individual knights have asked to intervene in a federal legal case challenging the presence of a decades-old World War II memorial in Montana because it contains a statue of Jesus.
“It is sad that some in America have become so intolerant of religion that they are willing to remove longstanding memorials to America’s war heroes to enforce their narrow view on the rest of us,” Supreme Knight Carl Anderson said May 30.
“The idea that a war memorial containing a religious symbol on a remote piece of public land somehow establishes religion in this country is at odds with the historical record, the vision of our Founding Fathers enshrined in the First Amendment and the extensive jurisprudence in this area,” Anderson stated.
The case concerns a memorial erected near Whitefish, Montana on land now within a commercial ski resort. Veterans of the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division asked Montana members of the Knights of Columbus to create a memorial like the hilltop shrines they encountered in Europe during World War II.