Catholics who joined the Masons were excommunicated, with reconciliation reserved to the pope. After the Second Vatican Council, however, the long hostility between Lodge and Church seemed to be easing. A reinterpretation of the anti-Masonic canons in led some Catholics to think that only Masonic groups actively plotting against the Church were forbidden to them. Even so, some Freemasons had actually been plotting against the Vatican through its bank. Both men later died mysteriously.
Although the current Code of Canon Law issued in fails to mention the Craft by name, in the same year the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith firmly reiterated the original ban:. A number of Christians from other traditions agree in their condemnation of Freemasonry, including many Lutherans, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Baptists and Orthodox believers of the Holy Synod of Greece.
Even the Mormons, whose rituals show Masonic influence, condemn the Craft. In truth, the Church and Lodge can never be reconciled. There is a widespread assumption that Masonic lodges were essentially political cells for republics and other reformers, and the Church opposed them as part of a defence of the old regime of absolute monarchy in which she was institutionally invested. What Clement XII described in his original denunciation was not a revolutionary republican society but a group spreading and enforcing religious indifferentism: the belief that all religions and none are of equal worth, and that in Masonry all are united in service to a higher, unifying understanding of virtue.
Catholics, as members, would be asked to put their membership of the lodge above their membership of the Church. The strict prohibition, in other words, was not for political purposes but for the care of souls. The legal language, and penalties, used in the condemnations of Freemasonry were actually very similar to those used in the suppression of the Albigensians: the Church sees Freemasonry as a form of heresy. While the Masonic rites themselves contain considerable material which can be called heretical, and is in some instances explicitly anti-Catholic, the Church has always been far more concerned with the overarching philosophical content of Freemasonry rather than its ritual pageantry.
Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the Catholic Church and its privileged place in the government and society of many European countries became the subject of growing secularist opposition and even violence. Now, there is little if any historical evidence of the lodges playing an active role in beginning the French Revolution. However, the anti-clerical and anti-Catholic horrors of the Revolution can be traced back to the secularist mentality described in the various papal bulls outlawing the Masonic lodges.
Masonic societies were condemned not because they set out to threaten civil or Church authorities but because such a threat was the inevitable consequence of their existence and growth.
Revolution was the symptom, not the disease. The alignment of Church and state interests, and their assault by seditious and revolutionary secret societies, were clearest where the Church and state were one: in the Papal States of the Italian peninsula. As the 19th century began, a new iteration of Freemasonry came to prominence which was explicit in its revolutionary character and avowed in its opposition to the Church; they called themselves the Carbonari, or charcoal merchants. They sanctioned and practised both assassination and armed insurrection against the various governments of the Italian peninsula in their campaign for a secular constitutional government, and were perceived as an immediate threat to the faith, the Papal States and the person of the pope.
The undermining of the teachings of the Church in the lodges, and the suborning of her authority on matters of faith and morals, were described repeatedly as a plot against the faith, both in individuals and in society. In the encyclical Humanum Genus , Pope Leo XIII described the Masonic agenda as the exclusion of the Church from participation in public affairs and the gradual erosion of her rights as an institutional member of society. During his time as Pope, Leo wrote a great many condemnations of Freemasonry, pastoral and legal.
He outlined, in detail, what the Church considered to be the Masonic agenda and, reading it with contemporary eyes, it is still shockingly relevant. The Catholic Herald spoke to two of them — but they asked not to be named. The Church has forbidden its members to become masons since , under penalty of excommunication.
But is this fair? Grand Lodge Freemasonry, which sprang up in England in the 17th century, is often confused by continental Catholics with its offshoot, Grand Orient Freemasonry, which has flourished in Europe since the era of the French Revolution. The latter does not require masons to believe in a Supreme Being. It also allows political discussion in lodges and is traditionally anticlerical.
The Catholic Church understandably reacted against it, accusing it of promoting atheism. However, no discussion of religion is allowed in the lodge. Politics, too, is off limits.
Catholic masons argue that for this reason they should be allowed to participate in the intricately choreographed and very long rituals of the Grand Lodge. They insist that they are not religious ceremonies. There is no moment where the two intersect. In 20 years I have never seen a situation in which Freemasonry asks me to rank my masonry or my Catholicism in priority to the other.
Hence, joining them remains prohibited by the Church. Catholics enrolled in masonic associations are involved in serious sin and may not approach Holy Communion. Religious Catalogue. See of Peter.
Daily Readings. Seasons and Feast Days. Prayer Requests. What are the Masons? Are Catholics allowed to belong to this organization? Author: Fr. William Saunders.
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