The Good Samaritan Council #13096 of Holy Name of Jesus
The KC’s at Holy Name of Jesus in Medina started right around the time Fr. Jonathan Licari came to us in January of 2001. It was a difficult transition and he felt he needed a support group he could go to on short notice. He grew up in a parish where the KC’s played a big role and his uncle was the Minnesota State Deputy of the KC’s, a few years ago, so he felt comfortable in chartering a council that we dubbed as the Good Samaritan Council, in honor of Fr. Arnold Weber’s favorite parable. At that time there were members of HNOJ who belonged to an existing KC Council called the Fr. George Council. They covered seven different Catholic parishes within HNOJ’s geography, Medina, Wayzata, Hamel, Corcoran, Plymouth, to name a few. Fr. Jonathan wanted a KC council that was just for Holy Name. Ten Men transferred over from the Fr. George Council and 20 of us signed on and went through the 3 different Degree Ceremonies to Charter our new council.
The most important thing to our council is simply to be what ever our Priest needs us to be. That simple task changes from priest to priest. Nothing erodes a priests authority faster than nitpicking and mumbling behind his back about how the last guy did things better than now. We want to be a safe harbor for our Priests and support what they are trying to accomplish without question. The second most important thing we want to accomplish at HNOJ is to be a support group for all Ministries at HNOJ. Other churches have issues with the KC’s and the local parish Men’s groups, competing for members. We want to take a back seat to the HNOJ Men’s Group, in fact most of our members are also in the HNOJ Men’s Group.
In 2004, the committee for Wednesday Night Religious Education came to us for support in helping them serve food. Many of the HNOJ families with two working spouses had to decide what was more important, a family dinner together at home or religious education for their kids at HNOJ. For some that’s an easy decision and others, difficult. For us the answer was BOTH. There are some Wednesday nights where we serve 800 people. There are HNOJ members who eat with us on Wednesdays and they don’t even have kids in the program. They come for the fellowship. The way to a person’s heart is often times through the stomach. We today continue to help run what has become known at the parish as Fine Dining
Our Women’s Auxiliary is synonymous with the HNOJ Right to Life group and their big fund raiser is “cinnamon roll Sunday”, usually held on the closest day to the Roe vs. Wade anniversary. The HNOJ KC’s are a big part of making that a success. That’s probably the next most important project we support. We host 6 parish breakfasts each school year. 10% of the proceeds go to the Seminarian Fund and the rest goes to what ever our Priest or Parish needs to fund. Very little goes to causes outside of HNOJ unless our members vote otherwise on special needs that pop up from time to time. The National organization takes care of the bigger causes. Our main local existence is to serve HNOJ and we do that by being part of something much bigger, the International organization of the Knights of Columbus and ultimately the Holy Roman Catholic Church. There are almost 2 million KC members, worldwide and just under 50,000 in the State of Minnesota. The Good Samaritan Council of HNOJ has 98 members. We are constantly hoping to double that number over the next ten years. For more information on joining the KC’s, call our membership director, Marty Dehen at 763-557-0857 or any one you know to be a KC at HNOJ. Surf this website and find our roster and see if you recognize any names.