by Christopher Hodapp
The Roman Catholic Church has officially issued a doctrinal letter this week re-affirming its longstanding ban on Masonic membership among its global flock, but Catholic Masons pretty much remain unmoved by the restriction.
In the letter released by the Vatican's Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) dated November 13th and signed by Pope Francis and DDF Prefect Cardinal Victor Fernández, it is stated that "Active membership in Freemasonry by a member of the faithful is prohibited, because of the irreconcilability between Catholic doctrine and Freemasonry."
The DDF is responsible for interpreting the Church's Canon Law when questions and disagreements arise over the application of the rules.
According to official Vatican state media, the letter was a response to a bishop from the Philippines who was alarmed by what he sees as a growing number of Freemasons in that predominantly Catholic country, and wanted to know how to respond pastorally. The DDF statement cites a 1983 declaration, originally issued by the late Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who was the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the time, stating that Catholics "in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion." Ratzinger would go on to become Pope Benedict XVI, who was widely regarded as extremely conservative in his views. But according to this new communication, it appears that sentiments haven't changed in the Curia.
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The letter states that:
That the famously liberal Pope Francis would now reaffirm his predecessor's opinion on Masonic membership some 40 years after Ratzinger's weighing in on the matter is an exceptionally disappointing blow to the hundreds of thousands of Catholic men around the world who are Masons and who don't regard the fraternity as irreconcilable with their faith in any way.
By contrast, the same office said last week that transgender people can be baptized, serve as godparents and act as witnesses at Catholic weddings. The two issues aren't at all related, but Vatican watchers have long conjectured that Pope Francis would make dramatic changes to Canon Law like permitting married priests and nuns, homosexual weddings and other radical alterations to the rules and traditions of the Church. For him to stick with the ban on Masonic membership, of all things, seems out of character for him.Freemasonry was first condemned by Pope Clement XII back in 1734, just 17 years after the formation of the Premiere Grand Lodge of England. For another 200 years Popes continued to issue papal bulls and encyclicals against the fraternity, sometimes more from a political power viewpoint than a religious one. Language specifically forbidding Freemasonry to Catholics (along with Kiwanis, Rotary and other associative fraternal organizations with secular memberships) was enshrined as a part of Canon Law from 1917 until the enormous revisions of the Second Vatican Council were adopted by 1965. The Church wrongly asserts that Freemasonry is its own "naturalistic religion" that promotes "indifferentism," and that its rituals deliberately ape religious ceremonies and offers a path to eternal salvation through a doctrine of merely doing good works on Earth. It regards Masonic use of the term "Great Architect of the Universe" as a deistic concept and opposes any notion that a person can be pleasing to God regardless of his religion. It's not an unusual position for any large denomination to take to protect its spiritual turf rights by claiming its path is the only way to salvation, but it's a woefully mistaken interpretation of what the rituals of regular, recognized "Ancient Craft Masonry" actually say.
The Vatican II revisions of the 1960s stripped out the specific names of groups that had been ruled off limits in 1917, and just generically banned groups that actively were anti-Catholic. While French-derived "continental Freemasonry" really has espoused anti-Catholic sentiments and actively promoted "free will" and lobbied for strict secularism in France's national laws, such Masonic groups are shunned as "irregular" by English/Scottish-derived grand lodges that make up the vast majority of what is called "regular, recognized" Freemasonry all over the world today. In addition, the Scottish Rite "higher degrees" that first came out of France in the 1700s and were revised in the U.S. by Albert Pike in the late 1800s did contain a Rose Croix ritual that condemned both monarchial and papal "tyranny" which were seen as interfering with free will in men. Such a point of view hardly convinced the Church's authorities to ever look kindly on the fraternity.
A March 28, 2023 article on the Union of Catholic Asian News website reported on the Masonic questions coming out of the Philippines:
It should be understood that Masonic grand lodges don't ban Catholics from joining - the restriction has always been a one-way street. Masonic membership only requires a man have a belief in God or a Supreme Being, and perhaps an associated belief in a spiritual afterlife (depending on the jurisdiction – each grand lodge jurisdiction can be slightly different). No one should be asking you your specific religious denomination as part of the petitioning process, apart from being able to accommodate your religious requirements when our ceremonies involve an obligation taken on a volume of sacred law that's specific to your beliefs. A lodge isn't a church, and your private beliefs regarding your personal relationship with the Almighty are seen as just that – private.
Because of that policy, lodges and grand lodges don't keep records and statistics tabulating the specific religious practices and denominations of their members, but recent voluntary polling shows that as many as 23% of U.S. Masons may be Catholic. If true, that works out to about 230,000 Catholic Masons in America alone. And if that holds true globally (just making a supposition), there may be as many as a million or more Catholic Masons worldwide. In countries where the Catholic population is much higher than in the U.S. (as in Central and South American nations and the Philippines) the percentages are most probably even higher. Obviously, these men aren't letting their church get away with telling them their fraternity is irreconcilable with their faith when they know that to be demonstrably false. Quite the opposite — Freemasonry encourages each Mason to study and support his own religious institution and its traditions as part of a well-rounded individual, while respecting the personal beliefs of others.
Oddly enough, Pope Francis issued an encyclical just last year called Fratelli Tutti ("All Brothers") which called on the world's political and religious leaders to create a new, ecumenical, "universal brotherhood" to help overcome Mankind's differences.
Some excerpts included:
To Catholic Freemasons around the world last year, such a proposed ecumenical assembly sounded mighty familiar, and many held out hope that this pontiff would finally drop restrictions on their already-existing "universal brotherhood." But obviously not. Of course, to the 'Militant Catholics' wing within the Church that has hated Francis from the day he was elected, last year's encyclical was clear proof to them that he's really a not-so-secret Jesuit Freemason anti-pope out to destroy the Vatican from within. Or something.
Pope Francis' agreement with the anti-Masonic position is not a hopeful one for Catholic Masons who want the Church to loosen its stiff-necked rules on the subject. But most Catholic Masons don't seem to be losing much sleep over it.
Myself? I sleep like a baby.
Amen in aeternum.
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