FREEMASONRY and its RELATIONS WITH THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

By a blog reader

As we have seen in the previous article, post Vatican II there was a fresh approach taken by the Catholic Church vis-a-vis Freemasonry. The main issues that fueled the antagonism against Freemasonry in the nineteenth century, namely those involving the unification and the loss of the Papal States were deemed to be no longer relevant. In the 1970s, as we have seen, the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (CDF) communicated with the various Bishops’ Conferences that Masons who did not join lodges that plotted against the Catholic Church could do so without the threat of any spiritual penalty. Furthermore, Canon 2335 was replaced by Canon 1374, which removed any reference to Freemasonry and reads (to this day) as follows:

“Those who subscribe to associations which plot against the Church will be quite rightly punished; those who promote or direct them will be punished by interdiction”.

This ought to be clear enough.

And yet Cardinal Ratzinger, then the new prefect of the CDF, in an event without precedent in the history of the Church published a “declaration concerning masonic associations” wherein he stated that that “the negative opinion of the Church with regard to masonic associations has not changed, because their principles have always been considered irreconcilable with the doctrine of the Church, for which reason membership of them remains prohibited”, despite the fact that the new Code of Canonical Law deliberately makes no mention of Masonry. He added that “those members of a congregation who did belong to masonic associations were committing a grave sin and would not be allowed to partake of Holy Communion”. Finally he concluded by saying that “it did not fall within the competences of local Church authorities to reach their own decisions with regard to the nature of masonic associations”

Faced with the reaction of several bishops’ conferences against Ratzinger’s declaration, which ran contrary to the practical approach of the Church since Vatican II and of the CDF itself which, as we have seen, had ten years earlier publicly and officially authorised membership of certain masonic orders — the Osservatore Romano found itself obliged to publish, on February 23, 1985, on the front page with a three column spread, an anonymous article entitled “Reflections, one year after the Declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. The irreconcilability of the Christian faith and Masonry”.

This article is even more unfortunate if that is possible, than Ratzinger’s declaration and suggests a return to the time of the inquisition.

To begin with, the title itself does not appear to be particularly relevant. It would have been more accurate to have referred to the Catholic faith since there was certainly at that time no ‘official’ incompatibility between Christian beliefs and Masonry, since from 1723, when Anderson and Desaguliers, (who were both clergymen), published the Constitutions of Masonry until the present day there have been many highly placed members of the Church of England, of the Scandinavian and German Lutheran churches, ministers of the Scottish, Swiss, Dutch, Finnish, North and South American reformed churches, Methodists, evangelicals and last and certainly not least Catholic and Orthodox priests and prelates who belonged to masonic lodges without having any problem with their faith, such as to give just two examples the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr John Fisher, or the Patriarch of Athens of the Orthodox Church, with whom Pope John XXIII, initiated, with his characteristic simplicity and humility, an opening of ecumenical dialogue in an atmosphere of fraternal understanding.

Neither was the initial approach of the article any more astute, stating as it did that the judgment of the Church against Masonry had been inspired by a multiplicity of reasons both practical and doctrinal. Among the practical reasons it quotes ‘the subversive activity’ of Masonry against the Church. Among the doctrinal reasons is the suggestion that Masonry has philosophical ideas and moral concepts opposed to Catholic doctrine, which are in essence “a rationalist naturalism which is behind its activities in opposition to the Church”. The use of two documents by Leo XIII, Humanum genus, of 1884, and a letter to the Italian people of 1892, as evidence gives the impression of profound historical weakness and partiality, not so much because the Church to which Leo XIII refers is not the Church of today, nor that the political problems of the unification of Italy would still continue to affect the universal Church of today, but that the Masonry of our time has nothing to do with that of the nineteenth century, nor with any specific political question either past or present.

But what is most worrying is that both the “Declaration” of 1983 and the “Reflections” of 1985 are founded on the severely erroneous document that the German bishops had published against Masonry on April 28, 1980. In fact, the Vatican “Reflections” of February 23, 1985 are just a summary of that German declaration, adhering to its fundamental points such as relativism, the concept of truth in Masonry, the ritual, the view which Masons hold of the world, etc. The similarities are all the more striking given the totally false premise of the German declaration. The starting point is seriously flawed in its view of Masonry as a religion or pseudo-religion and in the way it considers masonic rituals to have some kind of sacramental aspect.

Masonry is not and never has been a religion or a pseudo-religion. It is an initiatory and secular society, with philanthropic, cultural humanist, and philosophical aims, which are bound together in a notion of universal brotherhood and the improvement of mankind, sufficiently broad and ambiguous in its structure as to admit men of differing beliefs and political opinions, without being seen as indifferent or detached but simply as being tolerant and respecting the freedom of thought and belief of others, in an association which admits men of all faiths be they Catholic Christians, Protestant Christians, Muslims, or Jews. But perhaps the most striking aspect of both the Vatican “Reflections” of 1985 and the Declaration by the German bishops of 1980 is that neither quote any authentic text from Masonry itself, but use as their unique source Lennhoff-Posner’s Dictionary of Masonry ( Freimaurer-Lexikon )— as if it were the Bible of Masonry—when anyone with the very slightest knowledge of history knows the relative and personal value that all dictionaries have, and even more so this one which was published in 1932, although the bishops quote from a 1975 unaltered reprint (“unveranderter Nachdruck”).

Similarly, all the philosophical reflections made therein with respect to Masonry miss the point completely since they follow Lessing’s philosophy of Masonry to the letter by making the same basic mistake of considering Lessing as the greatest authority on the philosophy of Masonry and its official compiler. However, Masonry does not have any official philosophy, although throughout history there have been philosophers who were Masons such as Lessing himself, Herder, Goethe, Fichte and Krause, who all wrote of their ‘own’ philosophy of Masonry. These philosophers reflected on what they thought was or should be the philosophy of Masonry, reflections which differ radically one from another in the same way as those that have been written more recently by so many enthusiasts for philosophy and which are a clear demonstration of a great deal of ignorance and arrogance.

To sum up, the document published by the Osservatore Romano in 1985 avoids the fundamental and historical question of the hostility of Masonry towards the Church, or if you prefer that of the Church towards Masonry, which was the sole legal reason for incompatibility contained in the old Code. Instead, it attempts to return to doctrinal questions and questions of principle, including theological ones, based not on any current documents but rather on references to the teachings of the nineteenth century, and more specifically to the writings and doctrines of Leo XIII. This is conspicuous given the fact that at the time of the publication of the article so much was known about the historical context of that period and of the ideological confusion that existed then, at least as far as Masonry is concerned.

The “Reflections” of 1985, is the last official pronouncement by the Vatican on the subject of Masonry and is clearly a step backwards from the explicit recognition that there are types of Masonry that do not (and have never) plot against the Church, the logical conclusion should have been that the ideological and moral principles which inspire Masonry were not in opposition to the Catholic Church. And to reach this conclusion all that would have been required was a reading of the constitutions and analysis of the practices of Masonry.

Regular Masonry never plotted against the Church and its doctrinal principles have not changed, and therefore, according to the “Reflections” of 1985 and Canon Law a sit stands, any Catholics who become Regular Masons though no longer excommunicated remain in “a state of grave sin” and ”cannot partake of Holy Communion”.

This paradoxical state of affairs is further confounded when the state of grave sin implies in all cases an act of free will and being conscious of committing an intrinsically evil action. For which reason, it is extremely doubtful that one can be in a state of grave sin when one is not aware of having committed a culpable act let alone when one is convinced that he hasn’t!

Though there is much more to say on the subject about relations between Masonry and the Catholic Church, I will conclude the topic by highlighting yet another of those ironies of History.

Faced with a large number of bishops’ conferences in favour of lifting the condemnation on Masons who did not plot against the Church, the only one which adopted the opposing view, in 1980, was the German one, following the determination of Monsignor Stimpfle, Bishop of Augsburg. The pressure by the German Bishops was kept upright until the final meeting in Rome of the Commission preparing the new Code of Canonical Law, at which the German proposition was put to the vote and comprehensively defeated in the Plenary Congregation of 1981 with only 13 of the 59 members voting in favour of the German proposals for condemnation and 31 voting against.

Ratzinger’s statement to pre-empt any reinterpretation of Masonry was based on this defeated motion proposed by the then-German Bishops.

So where’s the irony? The irony is that today, there is no body of Catholics which are more progressive, more radical and schismatic and undermining of Catholic teaching than the German Bishops.

The irony is that if anyone’s at the forefront in “plotting against the Catholic Church” – it’s the Catholic Bishops in Germany itself.