Catholicism vs. Freemasonry
Irreconcilable Forever
Rev. Robert I. Bradley, S.J.
What is the truth regarding the present official attitude of the Catholic
Church toward Freemasonry? To begin this inquiry into that which is now
in effect, we should go back to what was stated in the Church's canon law
before there was any doubt about where the church stood on Masonry. The
former code (which, incidentally, was promulgated on Pentecost, May 27,
1917, just two weeks after Our Lady's first apparition at Fatima) contained
a canon which definitely capped all the previous papal condemnations of
it. Canon 2335 reads as follows:
Persons joining associations of the Masonic sect or any others of the
same kind which plot against the Church and legitimate civil authorities
contract ipso facto excommunication simply reserved to the Apostolic See.
In the wake of the Second Vatican Council, however, when the revision
of the Code of Canon Law was underway, the prevailing spirit of "ecumenical
dialogue" prompted questions among various bishops as to whether or
not Canon 2335 was still in force. Responding to these questions, a letter
from Cardinal Francis Seper, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, to the presidents of all the episcopal conferences,
dated July 18, 1974, stated that: (1) the Holy See has repeatedly sought
information from the bishops about contemporary Masonic activities directed
against the Church; (2) there will be no new law on this matter, pending
the revision of the Code now underway; (3) all penal canons must be interpreted
strictly and (4) the express prohibition against Masonic membership by
clerics, religious, and members of secular institutes is hereby reiterated.1
This rather awkwardly structured letter (which, for whatever reason, was
not published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the official journal of record
for the Holy See) came to be interpreted in many quarters as allowing membership
by laymen in any particular Masonic (or similar) lodge which, in the judgment
of the local bishop, was not actively plotting against the Church or legitimate
civil authorities.
This state of affairs, in which undoubtedly a fair number of Catholics
in good faith became Masons, lasted for some years. Then, on February 17,
1981, Cardinal Seper issued a formal declaration: (1) his original letter
did not in any way change the force of the existing Canon 2335; (2) the
stated canonical penalties are in no way abrogated and (3) he was but recalling
the general principles of interpretation to be applied by the local bishop
for resolving cases of individual persons, which is not to say that any
episcopal conference now has the competence to publicly pass judgment of
a general character on the nature of Masonic associations, in such a way
as to derogate from the previously stated norms.2
Because this second statement seemed to be as awkwardly put together as
the first, the confusion persisted. Finally, in 1983 came the new Code
with its Canon 1374:
A person who joins an association which plots against the Church is to
be punished with a just penalty; one who promotes or takes office in such
an association is to be punished with an interdict.
Cardinal Ratzinger's Declaration
Following the promulgation of the new Code, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,
the new Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued
a new declaration: (1) the new Canon 1347 has the same essential import
as the old Canon 2335, and the fact that the "Masonic sect" is
no longer explicitly named is irrelevant. (2) the Church's negative judgment
on Masonry remains unchanged, because the Masonic principles are irreconcilable
with the Church's teaching ("earum principia semper iconcilabilia
habita sunt cum Ecclesiae doctrina") (3) Catholics who join the Masons
are in the state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion. (4) no
local ecclesiastical authority has competence to derogate from these judgments
of the Sacred Congregation. 3
With these official statements of the Universal Church now on record 4
, it should be clear that the lamentable confusion of so many Catholics
regarding Freemasonry must be seen as only a temporary aberration to be
written off as one most costly consequence of a mindless "spirit of
Vatican II." But we may hope that, as in other issues that have plagued
the Church in the last score of years, there is a providence in this, a
veritable blessing in disguise. For now, more clearly than ever before,
we should see just why the Catholic Church has been and will always be
so opposed to Masonry.
It may at first seem plausible that the main (if not only) reason for
its being condemned by the Catholic Church is that Masonry is conspiratorial.
Its plotting against the Church (and, in the old Code, its also plotting
against the State) is the one descriptive statement mentioned in both versions
of the Code of Canon Law. Moreover, as the first curial document we cited
(that of 1974) seems clearly to imply, the one requisite condition for
permitting Catholics to join a Masonic lodge is that the lodge in question
was not actively plotting against the Church and the State. Yet, for all
its initial plausibility, this opinion seems to be inadequate. The proof
of this is evident not only from the two subsequent curial documents (of
1981 and 1983), but more decisively still from the entire previous history
of Roman documents, both curial and papal, treating of Masonry.
Beginning in 1738 with Clement XII's encyclical In Eminenti (just twenty-one
years after the establishment of the Grand Lodge of England, the event
usually recognized as the commencement of the modern Masonic movement)
and running through ten successive pontificates, the Church's case against
Freemasonry finds its culminating statement in 1884 in Leo XIII's encyclical
Humanum Genus. Masonic deceitfulness regarding its real objectives in society
and its consequent policy of secrecy regarding the authorities of Church
and State, and including even the rank-and-file of its own membership has
always been noted by the popes, and most tellingly by Leo XIII. 5 And in
the century since then and in our own country this conspiratorial policy
has been amply documented.6
However useful this knowledge of Masonic strategy is for our understanding
of the authentic nature of the movement, it is quite secondary. It is wholly
subordinate to that which defines the movement itself: the content in function
of which conspiracy is but "method," the end determining and
justifying the means. That content that end is what we must now examine,
if we are to find the fundamental and explicit reason for the Church's
condemnation of Freemasonry.
This fundamental reason can be briefly stated. The following summary
passage from Leo XIII's Humanum Genus suffices.
. . .that which is their ultimate purpose forces itself into view
namely, the utter overthrow of that whole religious and political order
of the world which the Christian teaching has produced, and the substitution
of a new state of things in accordance with their ideas, of which foundations
and laws shall be drawn from mere "Naturalism." . . .
Now, the fundamental doctrine of the Naturalists, which they sufficiently
make known by their very name, is that human nature and human reason ought
in all things to be mistress and guide. Laying this down, they care little
for duties to God, or pervert them by erroneous and vague opinions. For
they deny that anything has been taught by God; they allow no dogma of
religion or truth which cannot be understood by the human intelligence,
nor any teacher who ought to be believed by reason of his authority. And
since it is the special and exclusive duty of the Catholic Church fully
to set forth in words truths divinely received, to teach, besides other
divine helps to salvation, the authority of its office, and to defend the
same with perfect purity, it is against the Church that the rage and attack
of the enemies are principally directed.7
Catholicism and Freemasonry are therefore essentially opposed. If either
were to terminate its opposition to the other, it would by that very fact
become something essentially different from what it previously was; it
would in effect cease to exist as itself. For Catholicism is essentially
a revealed religion; it is essentially supernatural, both in its destiny
and in its resources. Beyond all natural fulfillment, it tends toward an
eternity of ineffable union with God in Himself; and beyond all natural
resources, it begins that union here and now in the sacramental life of
the Church.
Masonry, on the other hand, is essentially a religion of "reason." With
an insistence and a consistency matching Catholicism's self-definition,
Masonry promises perfection in the natural order as its only destiny as
indeed the highest destiny there is. And it provides for this perfectibility
with its resources: the accumulated sum of purely human values, subsumed
under the logo of "reason."
Literally a logo, the Masonic compass and square are the symbol of a Rationalism
that claims to be identified with all that is "natural." The
consequent syncretism, blending all the strands of human experience from
the cabalistic mysteries of an immemorial Orient to the technological manipulations
of a post-modern West is the basis for Masonry's claim to be not just a
religion but the religion: the "natural" Religion of Man. That
is why its claim to date from the beginning of history its calendar numbers
the "Years of Light" (from the first day of Creation) or the "Years
of the World" is no mere jest on its part. And that is why its opposition
to the Catholic Church antedates the Catholic Church's opposition to it.
For it cannot abide the Church's claim to be the One True Church, and the
consequent refusal by the Church to be relegated to the status of a "sect" which
Masonry would have it be.
Since the Church's claim to be the One True Church is ultimately founded
and validated on the reality of the One True God, the opposing Masonic
claim must ultimately derive from a perception of God that diametrically
opposes the Church's faith. And so it does. Although Pope Leo does not
explicitly speak of this essential opposition between Catholicism and masonry
in terms of the First commandment of God "I am the Lord thy God, thou
shalt not have strange gods before me" surely the most radical and
simplest way of situating this opposition is to say just this. The Masonic "God" is
an idol. What the Masons really worship is Man or the Spirit who has deceived
man from the beginning: the masked Spirit of Evil. This is the one primal
reason why the Catholic Church has condemned, and will always condemn,
Freemasonry. It is clearly sufficient to stand by itself as the only reason
and in a most fundamental sense, as Leo XIII seems to imply, that is the
only reason in fact.
Gravely Evil Misuse of Oaths
We can, however, give a second reason for the Church's opposition
to Masonry. Not strictly independent of the first reason, based as that
reason is on the First Commandment, we can yet distinguish a second reason
based on the Second Commandment. Some ten years earlier than Humanum
Genus, there appeared (even in English translation) a brief (barely more
than pamphlet-sized) but penetrating work, A Study of Freemasonry, by
the great bishop of Orleans, Felix Dupanloup.8 All the more impressive
because of his "liberal" credentials, Dupanloup duly notes
the facts, and the gravity, of the Masonic conspiracy. But what he stresses,
besides the same primary point subsequently stressed by Leo XIII, viz.,
the Masonic violation of the First Commandment, is its violation of the
Second Commandment by its gravely evil misuse of oaths. The famous (or,
rather, infamous) oaths that run through the entire ritual of Masonic
initiation are more than mere promises based on personal honor. They
formally invoke the Deity, and have for their object a man's total commitment
to a cause under the direst sanctions. The Catholic Church sees in such
oaths an inescapable grave evil. Either the oaths mean what they say
or they do not. If they mean what they say, then God is being called
to invert by His witness loyalties (viz., to Church and to State) already
sanctioned by Him. If the oaths are merely fictitious, then God is being
called to witness to a joke.
It is not the secrecy of what goes on "behind the lodge door" that
elicits and justifies the Church's condemnation of Masonry. It is rather
the formal violation of the Second Commandment which these proceedings
inescapably entail. The vaunted Masonic secrets, moreover, are scarcely
that secret any longer. There is in fact a frequent Masonic plea to the
effect that there are no secrets in Masonry that all is open to a truly
open mind. On this point we may take the Mason at his word: he is speaking
more truly than he knows!
The case for the Catholic Church's condemnation of Freemasonry is open
and clear. By its very nature as formulated in its philosophical statements
and as lived in its historical experience, Masonry violates the First and
Second Commandments of God. It worships not the One True God of revelation.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but a false god, symbolically transcendent
but really immanent: the "god" called "Reason." And
it invokes without adequate cause the Name of the One True God. After such
a case as this, to cite the secrecies of initiation and the further secrecies
of machination called "conspiracy" is not only anti-climactic,
it is beside the point.
To conclude: we Catholic should now see the Masons more clearly for what
they essentially are. They are the heirs (unwitting or otherwise is irrelevant)
of a religion which purports to be the one religion of the one "God" and
therefore the enemy, intrinsically and implacably so, of Catholicism. Freemasonry
in its modern mode is "modernity" in the deepest (i.e., the philosophical
and religious) sense of that term. It is, in a word, "Counterfeit
Catholicism." For its "God" is the "Counterfeit God":
the one who would be as God, the one who is the prince of this world, the
one who is the Father of Lies.
Notes
1. "Complures Episcopi," Notiziario CEI (1974)
191. (From Enchiridion Vaticanum, No. 563, pp. 350-51).
2. "S. Congregation pro Doctrina Fidei," Acta Apostolicae Sedis
73 (1981) 240-41. (From EV, No. 1137, pp. 1036-39)
3. "Quaesitum est," AAS 76 (1984) 200. (From EV, No. 553, pp.
482-87)
4. A summary of this documentation was made available in this country
by the American Bishops' Committee for Pastoral Research and Practice,
in a report entitled "Masonry and Naturalistic Religion," published
in Origins, 15 (June 27, 1985), pp. 83-84.
5. Acta Sanctae Sedis 16 (1883 sic) 420.
6. For an excellent recent survey, with emphasis on the American
scene, see Paul Fisher's Behind the Lodge Door: Church, State, and Freemasonry
in America (Bowle, MD: Shield, 1988).
7. Acta Sanctae Sedis 16 (1883 sic) 421. The English version used
here is from a Paulist pamphlet first published in 1944 and reprinted by
TAN (Rockford, IL: 1987), pp. 6-7.
8. The English edition which I used was published in Philadelphia
in 1856.
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