So, that’s the Catholic complaint. I think there was also a papal bull condemning Masonry for saying that there should be a seperation of Church and State, and freedom of speech and religion.
As for the fundimentalist Christian dislike of Masonry being due to its ecumenical nature, see Vanilla’s link. Putting aside the hysterical accusations of Satanism for a minute, that link says
They object to the fact that Masonry allows non-Christians as members.
Thanks for that Captain. I realised after posting that it was unfair to expect a cite for your impression that “there’s not much anti-masonic feeling anymore”, although outside the USA there is plenty of criticism of Freemasonry (in Britain and Italy for instance).
This site is titled CLARIFICATION CONCERNING STATUS OF CATHOLICS BECOMING FREEMASONS - Issued by the Office of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, February 17, 1981.
It claims that the principal objection of the Catholic Church to Freemasonry is that
which isn’t an objection to liberalism any more than the traditional refusal to persons entering the USA with a view to overthrowing it would be an objection to their liberalism. Whether or not the overthrow of the Catholic Church is an objective of Masons is open to question, of course, and this seems to vary wildly from lodge to lodge, from country to country and between different times in history.
Catholicism and Freemasonry are also described as incompatible because Freemasonry is religious yet non-Christian in nature, which is the reason why Catholics are forbidden to become Masons rather than an objection to Freemasonry as such.
There’s a further claim as follows:
which is a pretty bold claim, easily capable of contradiction if untrue, but again is not a complaint about liberalism - rather the opposite. I’ll have to search for a reference of a papal bull condemning Masonry for saying that there should be a seperation of Church and State, and freedom of speech and religion.
By the way, what problem do lawyers (canonical or otherwise) have with plain English?
everton
Am I misunderstanding part of your post or is the Catholic Church complaining that women cannot be members? This seems to be a rather strange objection considering that the Catholic Church does not permit the ordination of Women.
The Catholic Church does admin women members. If you want to argue the case about ordination of women, you’d better start a new thread or contact the CC directly.
The Catholic Church does admit women members. If you want to argue the case about ordination of women, you’d better start a new thread or contact the CC directly.
sc: So your b-i-l got his tush fired for insulting someone and instead of blaming himself for his failure he’s blaming the group he thinks (or maybe even knows) the person whom he insulted belongs to?
BTW, there are Masons in Paris too.
In short, your b-i-l’s story is bunk.
From the Papal Encyclical “Humanum Genus”, by Pope Leo XII, issued on April 20, 1884:
and
Are the Masons sinister?
Well, it helps if you define which Masons you are talking about, and in what time and place.
In the last Sherlock Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle describes how a benign fraternal organization comes to be a front for a criminal conspiracy in a particular area.
Conan Doyle based his story on accounts of how the Pinkerton Detective Agency infiltrated the Molly Maguires. To become a Molly you first had to be a member of the Royal Order of Hibernians, a fraternal organization for Roman Catholic men of Irish birth or descent. The Molly Maguires attempted to unionize coal miners at a time when the right to join an industrial or trade union (as opposed to a craft union, such as for carpenters or plumbers) was not recognized in the United States, and attempts to stage an industrial strike was viewed as a conspiracy to illegally restrain trade.
The Masons involve a lot of people, in a lot of different organizations, in a lot of places throughout the world. And it has done so for centruies. It is not surprising that the closeness and the cover these groups afford has sometimes been used to seek conspiratorial ends, but that need not be a reflection on Freemasonry as a whole.
It is true that historically Freemasonry was vehemently anti-Catholic, but that need not be taken as an indication of its intent, or the attitude of the majority of its members today. In the same way, General Pike, one of the principal founders of the Scottish Rite, was also also a founder of the Ku Klux Klan. While I know black people who are convinced that Freemasons are white supremacists, this historical fact does not necessarily have any bearing on the majority of Scottish Rite Masons today, or on their attitudes concerning black people. Similarly, when the KKK was revived after World War I, two of its three principal organizers were members of the Salvation Army, but that does not mean that the Salvation Army as a whole, then or now, is pursuing a white supremacist agenda.
It is widely accepted that Freemasons–some Freemasons, anyway–were active in fomenting the French Revolution. It is also the case that members of a Freemason group in Italy called the K2 Lodge were behind some major banking scandals in the late 1970s–there is some speculation that members may even have murdered Pope John Paul I, who died of apparently natural causes within weeks of assuming office, and just as news of their criminal activities were coming to light. This idea figured in The Godfather III. Even if this is true, it seems a safe bet that this would be in no way a reflection on the majority of Italian Freemasons, or on Freemasons anywhere.
Freemasonry involves a good deal of arcane and impressive-looking jargon. Some might call it mumbo-jumbo. Some Freemason publications state that “Lucifer” is a name for God. “Lucifer” means “bearer of light” and was a name given to the planet Venus in its appearance as the morning star.
In Isaiah there is a reference to Lucifer which Biblical historians have interpreted as being both a poetic reference to the king in Israel at the time and to the devil. (Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the devil is named Lucifer).
Some Born-Again Christians quake all over at this reference to Lucifer, and cite it as proof that one cannot be both a Christian and a Freemason because Freemasons are Satan worshipers. These seems like considerable leaps. It seems more reasonable to accept that whoever thought up this particular bit of Freemason philosophy did not give sufficient thought to the public relations consequences of his attempt at appearing erudite. It is also worth bearing in mind that there are probably plenty of Freemasons who don’t know or much care about this particular passage. It is also reasonable to wonder how many Freemasons, in practice, actually accord much weight to their lodge mumbo-jumbo anyway.
I would also suggest that some conservative Christians reflexively distrust and dislike any movement or group which is popular, and in which they do not have an interest. My Little Pony, Mister Ed, the economic policies of Michael Dukakis, the theory of evolution, the Democratic Party, the children’s novels of Madeleine L’Engle, Herry Potter, The Little Mermaids, Barney and Friends, The Church of Latter Day Saints, The Catholic Church, horror movies, The Episcopal Church, Gorbachev’s birthmark, The Teletubbies: the number and variety of things which have been publicly denounced by one or more conservative Christians as Satanic in recent times simply because they were not to their taste is truly staggering.
A true story; a woman I knew who worked as a receptionist in a shelter for homeless men run by Evangelic Christians burned her leg severely with boiling water. One day several weeks later she was in the office changing a bandage when another staffer, a registered nurse, saw what the burn looked like underneath and ordered her to go to a hospital emergency room.
I happened to be on hand that day, and I drove the woman to the hospital. On the way she laughed and joked about how silly all of this was. I later picked her up and drove her back to work. She was considerably more sober. The hospital staff had broken the news to her that she had third degree burns, that the burns had become severely infected, (which accounted for her pain, the swelling, and the green stuff oozing out from under her multicolored skin), and that if she had continued to avoid medical treatment she could easily have died from blood poisoning.
When she told another woman working at the shelter that, the woman said that “the doctors must have been Satanically inspired to say that”. This woman was pretty sure that Freemasonry was a Satanic conspiracy too.
As for Catholics and Freemasonry, in addition to what has already been offered, I recall that when I was attending Catholic school in the 1960s I was told that the Church objected to the oath one had to swear when joining a lodge. That is because (so I was told) one had to swear to uphold all of the rules of Freemasonry and keep all of its secrets, without first knowing what they were. In effect, you were being asked to swear to God that you would put keeping a promise you made in ignorance ahead of following your conscience as a Christian.
In the second book of the Studs Lonigan trilogy there is a fairly silly sequence in which Studs is initiated into The Order of St. Christopher. This is a thinly-disguised version of The Knights of Columbus, a fraternal organization for Catholic men, and James T. Farrell appears to have modeled the initiation procedures after the real Knights of Columbus rituals. (I am not a Knight of Columbus, but have read accounts of their initiation ceremony).
Without giving anything away, part of the procedure involves a kind of Candid Camera hoax. Members of the Knights from other lodges are secreted among the genuine initiates. An accident is staged, and these members try to get the group to agree that if they are asked by the police or other authorities about what happened, they will lie about what they know, so that the organization will not suffer any liability.
It is then revealed to the initiates that they have been hoaxed (though I suspect a number of them see through the bad acting on their own), and they are told that to be a good Knight of Columbus you should always put respect for the law and personal honor above the interests of the group-- that it is better to be right than to be loyal. I gather that this procedure was worked into the initiation as a way of distinguishing the Knights from the Freemasons, who were seen as being in error for overemphasizing loyalty and secrecy.
In a reference book on fraternal organizations I once saw a quote from a high-ranking Mason who said that the Knights were a kind of “consolation prize” for Catholic men because they couldn’t be Masons.
I found the suggtestion that Catholics felt a need to be “consoled” kind of precious. Doubtless there are Freemasons who are convinced they are the envy of the world, even as there are people outside of Freemasonry who are convinced that they constitute a deadly menace to everything that is right and decent. But there are also a great many people who regard the Masons as mostly being innocuous and silly, and–with no disprespect meant for the fine and important work of the Shrine hospitals–I suspect they are generally right.
The issue about blacks in Masonic lodges is untrue, although there is some historical basis for it.
At one time, not surprisingly, blacks were routinely blackballed and denied membership in Masonic lodges. There arose a separate and distinct lodge system run by blacks, the Prince Hall lodges. These were not under the authority of the state Grand Lodge, and were a viable way to extend to blacks the benefits of Freemasonry.
Interestingly enough, the Prince Hall lodges arose from a group of “men of color,” evidently led by one Prince Hall; the group had been made Masons in another lodge, applied for their own charter, and subsequently declared themselves independent of the extant Masonic heirarchy.
Today, I believe that almost every state Grand Lodge has passed resolutions recognizing the Prince Hall lodges in their states and extending reciprocal privileges to the members thereof (Mississippi may be the lone holdout, but I could be wrong). In any event, while individual lodges may act differently, there is no rule prohibiting black members of regular lodges, nor, for that matter, white members of Prince Hall lodges.
I am a Knight of Columbus, a Past Grand Knight of my council and Past Faithful Navigator of my Fourth Degree Assembly, and a Former District Deputy of my jurisdiction.
slipster’s account of a Knights of Columbus initiation ceremony is not accurate. We don’t stage any accidents, nor do we ever attempt to convince candidates to lie or conceal any information. Indeed, the oath a candidate is asked to take at the outset of his first initiation includes the disclaimer that no promise he is making will bind him in any manner that would conflict with his religious or civil duty.
Thanks again Captain, and others. Of course an encyclical isn’t the same as a bull, and the excerpts you quoted are not doctrinal, but para 23 is pretty strong stuff. Maybe he was still smarting from the annexation of Rome and the Papal States by the Kingdom of Italy a few years before he became Pope?
Separation of Church and State in Italy and separation of Church and State in the USA have different precedents. The first Article of the Italian Constitution of 1848 established the Catholic Church as the official state religion of Italy, and of course the USA famously has no state religion. I’m guessing that the Pope’s remarks, although directed to a general audience, were more concerned with the behaviour of Freemasons at home in Italy. Is the constitutional freedom of Americans to practice a religion of their choice under threat from the Catholic Church today?
Checking out the behaviour of the Propaganda Due, P2, Lodge (is that the one you meant slipster?) in Italy during the 1970s you won’t recognise it as a charitable or social organisation. Without quoting specifics I think it’s reasonable to assume that an organisation with well-founded links to Fascism and the Mafia deserves to alert suspicion beyond that of a dictatorial Pope. The article I linked to acknowledged that actions of Masons in the USA are recognisably different from those elsewhere, but that Catholics should not join for the reasons slipster has mentioned.
Ever hear of the Oddfellows? I have a bunch of friends that are part of the Oddfellows. They have all kinds of secret stuff that they can’t share with outsiders. They sit in fancy chairs and discuss stuff. Womenfolk aren’t allowed, but they gave them their own club, The Rebeccas" and they occasionally get together with the Oddfellows and cook for picnics and breakfasts and such. It just so happens that these guys are almost all biker types – except for a few old timers in the group.
Almost certainly. In fact, in that same encyclical, Leo says that it’s those forces that the Masons represent, and naturalism, that led to the loss of the Papal States. A few months after that, Leo released the encyclical “Libertas”, condemning the idea that “the authority in the State comes from the people only; and that, just as every man’s individual reason is his only rule of life, so the collective reason of the community should be the supreme guide in the management of all public affairs.”
Living, as we both do, in established liberal democracies, it can be difficult to understand the controversy about liberalism, but it was extremely controversal at the time, especially in Southern Europe, where the Catholic Church had a good deal of secular power. The idea that government comes from the will of the majority and that it’s not the government’s business what individuals think or say was an idea in direct contradiction to the Church’s belief that the government needs to act according to the will of G-d. Also, the liberal idea that all religions should be equal before the government challenged what was traditionally Catholicism’s preferred place.
I wouldn’t say that the "constitutional freedom of Americans to practice a religion of their choice"is “under threat from the Catholic Church today.” The Catholic Church has reconciled itself to religious plurality, especially after Vatican II, and I don’t think it has any intentions to take away the freedom to practice religion, either in America or elsewhere.
In my country the established church is Anglican, for well-documented reasons stretching back five and a half centuries.
The Anglican church has had considerable influence over public policy during that period, but that influence has been steadily decreasing during the last fifty years. Catholics were not eligible to vote here until 1830, so there has been practically no influence over public policy from that denomination. Under these circumstances, and as a lapsed Catholic myself, I have an entirely different experience of the relationship between state and religion than an Italian in the 1880s would have.
I’m also aware of the increased pragmatism in the Church since Vatican II, and apart from a few policy hotspots I’ve found that in this country at least, all denominations of Christianity have increasingly emphasised liberal and humanitarian concerns when making public statements. In any case, I’ve always tended to look to the Church for suggested advice rather than obligatory instruction, and have felt no restriction of conscience. This is greatly in contrast to conditions in force during the C19[sup]th[/sup] and early C20[sup]th[/sup].
However, the activities of Freemasonry here have had a much more unsavoury and illiberal impact over the same period. The proportion of public figures who are Masons is alarming; there is no doubt that they have used membership to establish and protect unreasonable advantage, and it’s only since the publication of critical books such as Stephen Knight’s The Brotherhood that they have diluted their predeliction for secrecy. I’m aware that I should avoid insulting people like Paul in Saudi, however, as I have no first hand experience of how Freemasons behave where he is from.
But although Catholics of my father’s generation will have been encouraged to reject Freemasonry under influence from the Church, there were also plenty of other secular reasons to be suspicious of it, arising from corruption within Freemasonry here.
I personally know several Catholics who are members of my old Masonic Lodge. The prohibition is all on the Catholic Church’s side, and I don’t mean that as a slam against that church. Masonry does not prohibit Catholics. It has always been my understanding that the oath which Masons swear is the root cause of the animosity, if animosity really exists. I do know that a lot of Masons are staunch supporters of the separation of church and state.
The information I had regarding authentic Knights of Columbus initiations was limited to some noncommital responses from acquaintances who are members and to an account in one of William Poundstone’s Straight Dope books. Possibly his information was out of date, or the initiation practices carry considerably from place to place.
If the hoax procedure was formerly used, and has been abolished, this may be a good thing. Now there won’t be a reason to think that the 4th Degree Knights in there dress uniforms with their plumed hats and their swords look silly. (I’m sorry: I couldn’t resist). The Knights actaally do some very fine work.
I expect that Farrell’s description of an initiation ceremony was based on the actual practices in Chicago during the time in which he wrote–the 1930s. Elsewhere in the Studs Lonigan Trilogy there are journalistic-like references to conditions in Chicago at the time, including the financial collapse of the electric power company during the early Depression and the movement to free Tom Mooney.
Yeah: it is the P2 Lodge I meant. “K2” is a mountain in the Himalayas. One of these days I will learn to type.
Just FTR, I believe Poundstone’s books carry the title Big Secrets. The Straight Dope is what brings us all together here, not a generic descriptor.