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-I

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'I

l



Why Catholics Can Not Be
Freemesons

D. F. MILLER-J. E. DOHERTY

ONE OF the questions frequently asked
of Catholics is why their Church raises
such a hullabaloo about Freemasonry,
even to the extent of forbidding Cath­
olics to join it under the penalty of
excommunication. "After all," many a
Mason has said to his Catholic acquaint­
ances, "I have never heard anything
said against Catholics in any lodge meet­

ing I have attended. I have many Cath­
olic friends. I even go to a Catholic

Church once in a while. I don't see why
there should be this opposition on the

part of the I Catholic Church toward an

organization that is working hard to­
ward the betterment of living conditions
all over the world. We Masons build

hospitals for children, and accept no
fees for those who need care. We pro­

mote many charitable causes. We dis­

tribute Christmas baskets to the poor.
We maintain a large number of com­
fortable homes for the aged. Why can­
not the Catholic Church recognize the

good we are doing and be friendly?"

-1-



Many a Catholic is hard put to ans­
wer such statements. For that reason
it is necessary to present some of the
facts about Freemasonry that clarify
the picture and reveal how obligated the
Catholic Church is to take a stand
against it. Indeed, these facts are pre­
sented for the consideration of many
Masons themselves, who, being enrolled
only in the lower degrees of Freema­
sonry; and being too busy to read the
official organs it publishes, and being
unaware of the historic opposition of
Freemasonry to the Catholic Church,
themselves appear to be most kindly dis­
posed toward Catholicism. It is not the
Catholic Church that has created the
barriers between itself and Freema­
sonry; it is the latter that has officially
declared itself to be an agency bent on
destroying the Church. The Church
merely recognizes this aim and is bound
to act accordingly.

The official organ of Freemasonry .in
the United States is The New Age, a
monthly publication which expresses
the aims of the organization. It is sup­
plemented by a news Bulletin and a
Clipsheet that are sent out to editors
and many clergymen all over the land.
It is impossible to read even the head-

-2-



Here, however, is some of the clear
and concrete evidence. Writing in The
New Age in the September, 1921, issue,
James W. Cook, a 32nd degree Mason,
had this to say about Masonry's atti­
tude toward the Catholic Church:

"Masonry ought to be and must be a
World Power. But there is a World

Power with which Masonry is face to

face, a World Power, cunning, crafty,
and secretive, that seeks to dominate
and control the life, the intelligence and
the conscience of our people and subject
them by intellectual bondage and servi­
tude to a foreign potentate . . . That
World Power comes to us in the name

of Jesus, garbles and twists His teach­

ing, and proclaims itself His sole repre­
sentative on earth. Yet, when it consid­
ers itself safe, it throws aside the garb
of religion and reveals its true nature
as a gigantic political organization, de­
termined to crush individual liberty and

-3-

lines of these hand-outs without recog­

nizing the unifying presence of a very
bitter opposition to the Catholic Church.

Indeed, one can, with but little research,
trace back to these propaganda vehicles

many of the popular charges against the
Catholic Church that make the rounds.



It would be difficult to find a more
definite statement of the attitude of
official Masonry toward the Catholic
Church; difficult, too, to find a state­
ment that more deliberately and dia­
bolically misrepresents the aims and
methods of the Catholic Church. To
take but one of many points as an illus­
tration, it ignores the essential fact that
the Catholic Church offers its teachings
first and fundamentally to the intelli­
gence and free will of individual men.
It claims and wields no authority except
that which men can, by studying the
evidence, come to see has been bestowed
on it by God. It resolutely refuses to
accept as a member any person who has
not been convinced that it represents
the truth. It has no secret policies or
stratagems; everything it does and says
is open for all to see and read in books
and ponder. But the secret society call-

-4-

freedom of thought, and by superstition,
ignorance and fear to bring all people
into subjection to its tyrannic will.
That World Power has muzzled nearly
all our press. It has captured or poi­
soned our sources of information. It is

organizing an army of Knights, who are
sworn to bring our country to the knees
of their pontiff in humble obedience."



ed Freemasonry has decreed that the

Church is "cunning, crafty, secretive,

seeking to dominate lives, to crush lib­

erty, etc."

This is not an isolated case of a high­

ranking Mason stating Masonry's eter­

nal opposition to the Catholic Church.

In the November, 1923, issue of The

Living Age, H. M. Mayes, also a 32nd

degree Mason, wrote as follows about

what he called the Crisis, i. e., the at­

tempt of the Pope and Bishops to steal

the American government:

"This papal-ecclesiastical scheme has

ever beeri, and is now, the destructive

factor of the menace to human liberty

in society and the affairs of men. Rom­

an priests assert - by the authority of

the Pope and the alleged 'holy Fathers'
- that they alone possess the right and

the power to direct political (temporal)

and spiritual affairs and conduct of

men, and that no one has any rights

contrary to the will and authority of

the said 'holy Father the Pope'; that

the most penitent submission to his de­

crees in matters both spiritual and tem­

poral is necessary to salvation,
and

without his pardon, extended through

his 'holy priest,' on any act or thought,

-5-



his anathema and purgatory are assured
to the offending soul. All decrees must
be obeyed; ... public schools in America
must be destroyed because they are un­
godly, not being created and controlled
by the Pope; the Church must rule the
State; the Church is supreme!"

This sounds exactly like a battle-cry,
which it was intended to be. The sad

thing is that there are so many people"
by whom it was taken as a challenge
in behalf of a just cause. It is a matter
of history, of fact, of every day evi­
dence, that the Catholic Church sets
down clearly defined limits of authority
in the spiritual and temporal realms;
that she has always upheld the authority
of the States as the one established by
God for all temporal affairs. It is there­
fore pure fabrication to state that Rom­
an priests assert that "the Pope and
'the holy Fathers' alone possess the
right to direct the political and spiritual
affairs and conduct of men." The men

,

who speak thus hate the Catholic
Church enough not even to want to
know the elementary truth about it.

In the same issue of The New Age
this diatribe may be read:

-6-



"The Roman Catholic hierarchy is the

only thing on earth calling itself a

Church that has always been, is now,

and according to its own repeated asser­

tions, always will be opposed to advance­

ment in education - particularly popu­

lar education - in any direction that

promotes general enlightenment; and

more particularly, it is strenuously op­

posed to our public school system
- for

obvious reasons. It is an autocratic,

politico-commercial aggregation, profes­

sing religion, behind which profession
it endeavors to meddle with everything

else on earth, in hell or in heaven; arro­

gating to itself the power to decide who

shall inherit the earth, inhabit it and

possess it, and finally ascend to heaven,

and consigning everything else to eter­

nal and bottomless perdition . . .
"

This particular paragraph contains

one of the frequently repeated Masonic

charges against the Church, namely,
that she opposes education. Behind it

lies a pertinacious effort on the part of

official Masonry to bring about, through

legal means (which would be strictly

totalitarian) "the compulsory attend­

ance of all children at the public
schools." Indeed, the Supreme Council

of the chief Masonic lodge in the United

-'1-



States usually publishes in The Living
Age its permanent ideals, and first
among these is "The American public
school, non-partisan, non-sectarian, effi­
cient, democratic, for all the children of
all the people." Clearly, the Catholic
school system of the United States
stands in the way of the achievement
of this ideal, and the full weight of the
propaganda of the Masonic Order is
levelled against it. The Church is there­
fore said to be opposed to education, a
charge that any student of history can
quickly learn to be false. Or the Church
is said to favor the wrong kind of edu­
cation because she insists that her own
children learn something about God in
school. We hav.e known Masons who
sent their children to Catholic schools
and academies and colleges; but they
did so without knowing that the poIicy­
makers of Masonry have declared total
war on such schools, as the above quo­
tation proves.

Sometimes it is said by Masons that
the Church, in its condemnation of
Masonry, has in mind only the Euro­
pean and particularly the Latin branch­
es of the order, because they are usually
outspokenly atheistic. They add that
Freemasonry in America does not follow

-8-



those lines, but that it is just a busi­
ness man's fraternity bent on doing
good for its members and for society.
The above American Masonic declara­
tions should in themselves be sufficient
answer to that supposed distinction.
However, The New Age itself announced
in its January, 1924, issue that "any
attempt to' draw an arbitrary line be­
tween Latin and American Masonry is
largely gratuitous ... The Supreme
Council of the Scottish Rite of the
Southern Jurisdiction (Mother Coun­
cil of the World) and of the Northern
Jurisdiction of the United States recog­
nize the Supreme Councils of France,
Italy, Switzerland and Belgium in Eu­
rope, of the Argentine, Brazil, Cen­
tral America, Chili, Colon, Columbia,
Dominican Republic, Ecuador, 'Mexico,
Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Vene­
zuela in the western hemisphere, with
all of whom the American Supreme
Councils are maintaining cordial frater­
nal relations."

These specific evidences of the atti­
tude that Masonry takes toward the
Catholic Church are supported by the
various lists of books and pamphlets
publicized in The Living Age. Promi­
nent on these lists are titles that in

-9-



themselves show a grim concern about
the progress and teachings of the Cath­
olic Church. On a list we have at hand

there are the following titles: "Amer­
ican vs. Roman Catholicism"; "Church
of Rome (Extracts from 1913 Papal
Allocution)"; "Double Doctrine of the
Church of Rome"; "Earth's Oldest Em­

pire (Church of Rome)"; "Humanum
Genus - Pope of Rome's Letter against
Freemasonry and Albert Pike's Reply";
"The Truth Shall Make You Free­

the Pope's Letter attacking the Public
School System and the Supreme Coun­
cil's Resolutions relative to same"; "Vox

Dei, Part I (On the Church of Rome) ".

From all this it can be seen that the

Catholic Church has no choice other

than to prohibit membership in Free­

masonry, even for the sake of insurance

or business contacts, to all Catholics.
She takes at their face value the dec­

larations of high American Masons that
Catholicism is the mortal enemy of the

World Power of Freemasonry, and that
the latter must campaign for its destrue­
tione Every dues-paying Mason, no mat­
ter what he personally thinks of the
Catholic Church and her schools, is con­

tributing to that campaign.

-10-



Despite these facts, no true Catholic
permits a hatred of Masons to find shel­
ter in his heart. He knows that both
those who express the inside aims of

Freemasonry, and those rank-and-file
members who are scarcely conscious of
what those aims are, in some way are
victims of misrepresentations of the
Catholic Church that have been handed

down to them by others, Every true
Catholic humbly realizes that, if he him­
self had been brought up from child­
hood on the constant repetition of the
wild things quoted from Masonic writ­
ings in this article, he would have a
hard time finding and accepting the
truth about the Church. And he humbly
prays that every Mason will be granted
the grace to turn aside from the carica­
ture of the Church he has been shown,
and to see and know and love and em­
brace the reality.

Are, Catholics bigoted towards Ma­
sons? To illustrate that they are, the
Mason tells a story. Mary Fallon, a
devout Catholic, was in the city hos­
pital, sick and in dire need of an opera-

'

tione She needed a hundred dollars, and
since her prayers were loud and fre­

quent, the staff as well as the patients
knew that she was making a novena for

-11-



the funds. Word came to the Masons,
whose charitable work in the hospital
was not inconsiderable. They sent up
seventy-five dollars in cash. The money
came anonymously, but the nurse who

brought it revealed that it was a gift
of the Masons. Opening the envelope,
Mary panicked the entire hospital with
her loud thanksgiving: "Thanks be to

God and Our Blessed Mother." But she

added an admonition that they should
send any more money through the

Knights of Columbus, "because," she

said, holding up the money, "those Ma­
sons have stolen twenty-five dollars."

The Catholic, on the contrary, is
more likely to resemble the Mason him­

self who, with hearty open-mindedness
exclaims: "Some of my best friends are

Catholics." So, he, too, numbers many
Masons as friends, but nurses a vague
mistrust of the organization to which

their loyalty is given. This mistrust is

far from being misplaced. During the
last two centuries the Church has come

to know Freemasonry in almost every
I nation of the world. While fighting for

basic morality and faith it has had allies

in individuals, government and even

non-Catholic Churches, at one time or

another. But it has had one constant

-12-



enemy, Freemasonry. Since Masonry
is a secret society, Catholic opposition
has sometimes been misinformed and

exaggerated; at other times it has been

exploited by forces more evil than Ma-
.

sonry. But the hostility of the society
to the Church, though gentle at times, ·

has been incessant and in most countries

furious and even bloody. Not to recog­
nize in Freemasonry a foe of the

Church, after such a history, would

argue a naivete or a stupidity among
Catholics which all do not share.

The American Freemason says: "This

magazine has never swerved from the

position that between the Masonic fra­

ternity and the Catholic Church there

is an antagonism inherent in the nature

of the organization." If Masons can

speak so frankly, why should not Cath­
olics do so also? The nature of the

Catholic Church is that of a supernat­
ural society, teaching the revealed re­

ligion of- Jesus Christ; that of Freema­

sonry is pure naturalism masquerading
as a religion. It is on these grounds
that the main conflict occurs. Rudyard
Kipling reveals it in cockney overtones
while celebrating the glories of

-13-



The American Mason may vehe­

mently deny that he is an infidel, yet
he will find that Masonry serves to re­
duce revealed dogmas of faith to the
level of natural truths and that it oper­
ates as the religion of secularism. This
is what is meant by infidelity. It is

puzzling that Freemasonry in the be­
ginning was a Catholic Labor Guild; at
the same time nothing so clearly reveals
the nature of the fraternity as its con­
trast with this Catholic group.

The original Freemasons were skilled
craftsmen whose work ironically enough
was the building of the great Catholic
cathedrals. But this was in the era of
faith. The new phase of Freemasonry
came about during one of those recur-

-14-

MY MOTHER-LODGE

Outside, "Sergeant! Sir! Salute! Salaam!"
Inside - "Brother!" and it doesn't do no 'arm,
We met upon the level an' we parted on the

square,
An' I was Junior Deacon in my Mother-Lodge

out there!
We 'adn't good regalia,
An' our Lodge was old and bare,
But we knew the Ancient Landmarks,
An' we kept 'em to a hair;
An' lookin' on it backwards

It often strikes me thus,
There ain't such things as infidels
Excep', per'aps, it's us.



'rent periods when Christianity was

supposed to be dead or dying. In Eng-:
land, certainly, Catholicism was all but

wiped out and the Catholic guilds had
died with it. They came to life again,
not as guilds but as secret societies in

which a new and distinctly non-Chris­

tian religion could be taught and pro­
fessed by means of Masonic symbols.
The earlier guildsmen had always sworn

loyalty to the Church and her doctrines;
the new "craftsmen" were enjoined to

profess "the religion common to all

men," which reduced religion to the
least common denominator of faith.

To understand how Freemasonry
came to be a faith or a pseudo-religion,
it is necessary to know how it arose.

Those were the days of Spinoza, Bayle,
Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Voltaire and
Rousseau. Whatever the literary value
of their writings, the total effect was
to make Christian revelation appear as

a fable. That God came to earth as the

Saviour of men was to most of these

writers a myth. Heaven and hell as pic­
tured by Our Lord were myths to them,
and so was supernatural grace. Above

all, it was a myth that man had fallen
from a state of original justice. In

place of these "myths" they substituted

-15-



their own: that man was naturally all
right and sufficient for his own happi­
ness. On this basis they romanticized
the condition of the savage and prefer­
red his state of natural morality to that
of Christianity.

It still remained for Freemasonry to
hit upon a system of symbols and a rit­
ual that might make this myth the ob­
ject of religious worship. Through less­
er men, such as John Anderson, an Ang­
lican clergyman, and John T. Desguili­
ers, a Huguenot minister, an ingenious
system gradually 'came into being. The
truths of natural religion were embodied
in Masonic symbols in such a way that
the adherent of any creed might inter­
pret them as he wished. At the same
time the ritual was capable of arousing
religious emotion in a way that, while
in effect worshipping man, one had the
same emotional experience as in wor­
shipping God. Later additions of legen­
dary Jewish rituals, corruptions of
Christian history, and echoes of ancient
occult mystery-religions, c r e a t e d a
heightened atmosphere of the hidden
and mysterious.

Among the "enlightened," especially
of the upper class, it became a fad to

-�6-



join the Masons. The fad spread rapidly
through Europe, but especially through
England and France. Here it might
well have gradually died out were it not
for one stupendous event, the French
Revolution. It would be absurd to say
that Masonry caused the Revolution, "for
it was but one of many forces that en­

tered into that explosion. But the

Lodges were convenient meeting-places
for the fomenters of the revolt, and the
Masons looked upon it as a triumph of
their ideas. By it they were given a

"cause," and cast into a revolutionary
mold. The Lodges in turn acted as a
transmission belt to bring the revolu­

tionary movement into every nation.

Had the Masons been revolutionary
only in. the field of politics, they might
have found it possible to live at peace
with the Church, but their religious
ideas were also subversive, and thus

they met, in the Church, an implacable
foe. In Protestant nations, which were

largely secularized anyway, there was
no great impact. But wherever the
Church' was strong it was. the classic
case of an irresistible force meeting an
irremovable object. The clash caused

Masonry to assume and reveal its ulti­
mate form; it rejected the pretense of

-17-



agnosticism and became openly athe­

istic; it galvanized all anti-clerical
forces into action against the Church.
It spawned a host of other secret so­
cieties which for Catholics are only
theoretically distinct from the Masons,
such as the "Lodge of the Nine Sisters,"
"Friends of the Night," "The Illumi­

nati," "The Corbonarii," "The Black

Hand," etc. It all presented the forces
of this world arraigned against the'
Church.

"The Masonic body i'S throughout the
world an enemy of the Catholic Church

and active in seeking her destruction:
nor is there any difference in its activity
between one country and another, save
that it is naturally more in evidence
in a country where Cathelicism is strong
than in a country where it is weak. It
is beside the mark to plead that it has
no connection, hostile or other, with the

Faith, that its elaborate Jewish ritual
nowhere contradicts a Catholic doctrine,

-18-

Hilaire Belloc, a representaive Cath­
olic historian, tells in a few words, in
his "Survivals and New Arrivals,"
what the history of the Masonic body
has been in relation to the Church up
to now:



that its inculcation of good fellowship,
and its many charities, its arrangements
for mutual aid among its members, are
indeed consonant with the Catholic idea

of charity. All that has nothing to do
with the plain fact which stares us all
in the face throughout the world, that

Masonry acts as an enemy of Catholi­
cism. Where Catholicism is very weak,
as in England, the hostility is neglible.
But exactly the same lodges are far
from neglible in Ireland, and in the
United States that hostility is promi­
nent in almost exact proportion to the
local strength of the Church..... Where
Catholics are negligible in numbers it

disappears. In the Catholic nations­

France, Italy, Belgium and Spain - the

hostility of Freemasonry is common­

place, and the programmes for the des­
truction of the Church, drawn up in
the lodges, are available for all to
read. I have heard it advanced that the

origin of the quarrel lies not with Ma­

sonry, but with the Church itself, which
in denouncing on principle all secret so­

cieties, has put itself voluntarily in con­
flict with the powerful corporation of

Masonry and must face the conse­

quences. That is debatable. But the fact

of universal h o s t i l i t y cannot be

doubted."

-19-



The so-called secrets of the society
have been exposed many times by dis­
sident Masons and the warfare of the

fraternity with the Church has been so

open in many countries that there is no

need for new "revelations." It would

be a wonder if the history of any inter­
national society did not reveal scandals, .

and Masonry is no exception. Catholics
will smile at such explanations as that

the Jesuits have secretly entered the

society and caused the scandals in order

to discredit the fraternity. It is not on

such grounds that mistrust exists; there

are facts of history that cannot fail to

open the eyes of anyone, not all of them

familiar to all American Catholics.

How many know, for example, that
the Kulturkampf in Germany, with its

terrible persecution of the Church, was

due to Masonic pressure on Bismarck?

Or, what is an openly recognized his­
torical fact, that the murder of the
Austrian archduke Ferdinand, which

precipitated the first world war, was

the work of a secret society, "the Black

Hand," and this with the open collusion
of .the Serbian government and other

secret societies in Austria? Or that one

of the motives for the murder was to

curb Catholic influence in Europe?

-20-



Catholics who wonder at the decline

of religious practice in some parts of

Italy do well to read the history of that

unhappy country over the past century.

Nothing moved without the consent or

instigation of Masonic, anti-clerical

governments, and when it did move, it

was to persecute the Church or to in­

spire hatred towards it. But no tragedy,
in .Catholìc eyes, is greater than that of

France, when its present de-christian­

ized and paganized state is contrasted

with the glory that was France in the

ages of faith. From the fall of the

MacMahon government in 1877 practi­

cally until the second world war, Ma­

sons have held the reins of.government.

They were the ones responsible for the

expulsion of religious orders and the

closing of all Church schools. A typical
French anti-clerical was Clemenceau,

and through him the Masonic influence

against the Church was felt even 'in the

League of Nations.

Such events mean little to Amer­

icans because they happened in Europe
and are looked upon as quite foreign to

our way of acting. To come close to

home let us look at Mexico. Mexico's

history is significant not only because it

'is in many ways a pattern for revolution

-21-



in other Latin-American countries, but
above all because it is an example of the
influence of American Masons, even
when it is disclaimed. 'Was there actual

intervention in Mexico? This there was

on the part of the Masons in a way that
would be unbelievable were it not docu­

mented by so many sources. Successful
revolution took place in Mexico, as in so

many other countries, as a result of
Masonic control, first of the army, then
of the government. It was a revolution

inspired by the Scottish Rite in Mexico
itself. The resulting government dis­

pleased the U. S., however, and a way
was sought to curb its influence.

How this was done involved a man

named Joel Poinsett, a botanist, for
whom, interestingly enough, the poin­
settia or Christmas flower is named.

Evelyn Waugh, famed international cor-

respondent and novelist, tells the story: m
"The first instrument of this policy was
Joel Poinsett, who came to Mexico at
the establishment of its independence,
first as United States agent, later as
accredited minister; the means he chose,
perhaps the only efficacious means he
could have chosen, was the establish­
ment of a rival secret society - the
Yorkish Rite to oppose the dominant

Scottish Rite.

-�2-



"The Yorkish Rite, introduced by

Poinsett, was the natural rallying point
for those who had been disappointed in

the share-out of benefits; it was made up

of the lawless elements of the revolution

- the Villas and Zapatas of the revolu­

tion of 1910 - and was republican, pro­
letarian and fiercely irreligious in char­

ter. Five lodges were organized with lo­

cal chiefs.... Soon the two Rites were

divided not only by political views but

by personal vendettas. For pfty years
the history of Mexico becomes a series

of coups and plots, assassinations and

executions; of embezzlement and brib­

ery; the learned and charitable institu­

tions were sacked to provide funds for

rival gangs; the work of three centuries

of civilized rule was obliterated in a

generation, leaving the nation bankrupt,
discredited abroad and divided by irre­

concilable hatred at home. By this time

doubts began to arise at Washington
whether these turbulent n e i g h b o t s

would be a desirable addition to the

United States."

Contemporary Spain also illustrates

the magical effects of Yankee and Ma­

sonic "non-intervention." C a r l e t o n

Hayes, former ambassador to Spain and

eminent historian, sums up Spain's case

-23-



in the following words, in his latest
book, "The United States and Spain."
"This strife of the last century and a
half, is a different kind of thing - dif-

.

ferent in origin, nature and result­
from any that Spain had previously ex­
perienced. Its origin was riot in native
individualism and provincialism, but
rather in the impact of novel foreign
ideologies on Spanish tradition. Its re­
sult has been the creation of a new and
militant division of Spaniards into two
camps which may conveniently be la­
beled 'left' and 'right' or 'revolution'
and 'conservative.' . . . The ideological
basis had been provided by the so-called
'enlightenment' of the eighteenth cen­
tury. The enlightenment's 'transmission
belt,' so to speak, was Freemasonry."

What about Freemasonry in the Uni­
ted States? Here it has unique prestige,
such as it has nowhere else except per­
haps England. George Washington was
a Mason, and Benjamin Franklin,
Thomas Paine, Paul Revere and Ethan
Allen, though not, as some have said,
Thomas Jefferson or Samuel Adams.
Fourteen presidents have been members
of the society including Franklin D.
Roosevelt and the present chief execu­
tive, Harry S. Truman. General Mac-

-24-



Arthur is also a Mason, as is the man
whom President Truman first named
for the ambassadorship to the Vatican,
General Mark Clark.

The local lodge (in a neighboring
town from where we write) is worthy
of a brief study because it is so typical
of Yankee Masonry. The Town clerk
is a member of this lodge, and almost.
every town officer, including the select­
men. So are the minister of the Prot­
estant Church, the members of the
school board, the principal, the town
inn-keeper, the undertaker and indeed
almost every merchant in town. For
the weekly or monthly meeting they
come to a blue room just above the drug
store. Each is clad in a white apron
called a lambskin. They could not be
better known to one another, yet they
exchange a number of intricate grips
and signs, presumably so that they may
recognize their brother Masons. When
the various .rituals take place inside one
is reminded of a college fraternity initi­
ation except that the men are too old
and dignified for play-acting and the
atmosphere is one of serious and even
profound reverence. Most of them have
only three degrees and are perfectly
content, although a good number are

-25-



studying both the Scottish and the York

Rites with the ambition of going as

high as the Temple of the Mystic Shrine.

Two members are full-fledged thirty-sec­
ond degree Masons. The "chaplain,"
who is not the minister, reads in a lugu­
brious voice from the Masonic' Bible,

but it is apparent to those who know his

private life that morality has nothing

to do with his office of chaplain.

In harmony with the rule against

poltical and religious bickering, it is

.�ruly wonderful that on these explosive

topics there is usually a universal meet­

ing of minds. There are several Jewish

Masonic Lodges and two legitimate Ne­

gro ones, but in this Lodge neither a

Negro or a Jew would be admitted. On

the street after the meeting each Mason

will know another and will help him in

very real and generous ways. In
elec­

tions he will recognize a brother-Mason

as a candidate and will almost never

vote against him in favor of a' non­

Mason.

Are these men like the anti-clericals

of Europe and Mexico, or are they Ma­

sons of a different breed? Anson Phelps

Stokes, in his book, "Church and State,"

quotes an unnamed but high-standing

-26-



American Mason against the view that
American Masonry is anti-Catholic. "I
do not think," this anonymous Masonic

authority says, "symbolic or Blue Lodge
Masonry as a whole is anti-Catholic any­
where in this country. I do think that
many Masons are anti-Catholic either
from personal prejudice or because they
are misled by anti-Masonic feeling
among Catholics to believe that Masonry
should have the same sort of feeling
toward the Church of Rome. The South­
ern Jurisdiction of the Ancient and

Accepted Scottish Rite of course has
been for a long time very definitely
anti-Catholic, both in its political activ­
ities against parochial schools, public
transportation furnished by the State
to private schools, and otherwise. J
know of no Grand Lodge in this country
which either itself pursues or permits
among its Lodges any anti-Catholic ac­
tivities. Freemasonry, of course, is in
no way responsible for radical writers
in the anti-Catholic press who choose
to. attempt to hitch up Masonry with
their particular variety of propaganda."
The writer also emphatically disclaims
any connection between American Free­

masonry and the atheistic type of the
French Grand Orient.

-27-



The sincerity of this statement can­

not be doubted, but the conclusions seem

awry. The writer admits that European

Freemasonry of the French type is mil­

itantly atheistic; he concedes that the

Southern Jurisdiction of U. S. Masonry

is anti-Catholic; he carefully omits say­

ing anything about the York Rite, but,

making his opinion solely responsible
for the Northern Jurisdiction of the

Scottish Rite, he declares that even in

this a great many individual Masons are

anti-Catholic; still he would have it that
. Masonry as a whole is not anti-Catholic.

His declaration really confirms what

this study shows: that many American

Masons, like the statesmen named, are

tolerant of the Catholic Church and

even at times sympathetic, and this in

spite of the fact that they are Masons,
but that Masonry itself and by its very
nature tends to anti-Catholicism.

This is because it is un-Christian.

The. fact that it gives a nod to God as

the Great Architect does not, as some

would think, make it religious in the

true sense, for in nodding to G.od it has

first discarded God's revelation in favor

of mere naturalism. A practical proof
of anti-Catholicism 'would be found in

any poll of Masonic periodicals through-

-28-



out the country on live issues. It would
be found that when the Church arouses

public opinion in defense of traditional
morality, these oppose the Church for
specious reasons as imposing its mor­
ality on others. Again, when the Church
struggles for the religious education of
its children, it meets antagonism from
Masons. In slightly varying forms,
these two questions have precipitated aU
the struggles between the Church and
Masons in Europe. Briefly they may be
described as campaigns for the com­
pletely lay state and the lay school.

Among Christians, not only the Cath­
olic Church has condemned the society.
As late as 1937 a plebescite was hell!
in Switzerland to outlaw Masonry in
that democracy. But the most definite
condemnation was made right here in
our own country. In 1826 a Mason
named William Morgan, who had threat­
ened to reveal the secrets of the frater­

nity, was kidnapped by members of his
own Lodge and subsequently disappear­
ed. Murders have happened before but
this one gave the impulse for a country­
wide anti-Masonic movement. It was re­
vealed that in many states Masons held

every important office and were, well on
the road to control the federal govern-

-29-



Thus from a source that is anything
but Catholic we have the judgment of

-30-

mente During subsequent trials of the

Morgan kidnappers, much was made of

the fact that the Masonic oath should

outlaw a Mason from serving on a jury

trying another Mason. Before the move­

ment died down every Lodge in Ver­

mont collapsed and most of them in the

neighboring states. An anti-Masonic

party was formed and elected governors
in Vermont and Pennsylvania. Ver­

mont also gave its electoral vote to a

presidential candidate on a platform of

opposition to Masonry.

Protestant churches were aroused

also. A nation-wide anti-Masonic con­

vention was held in 1850, and a com­

mittee appointed to inquire into the

effect of Freemasonry on the Christian

religion. Its report to the convention

was as follows:

"It (Freemasonry) is not Christian­

ity, or the handmaid of it, but an im­

pious substitute for it. By estranging
the mind from the doctrines of the

gospels, it inevitably prepares its cham­
bers for the lodgment of infidel

principles.
"



many Popes confirmed. "Obviously,"
said a high-ranking Mason recently, "it
is impossible to be a good Catholic. and
a Freemason at the same time." With­
out implying that every Mason advert­
ently makes a choice against Christ, a
Catholic should not hesitate to para­
phrase this judgment with the words of
Our Lord Himself : "No man can serve
two masters, for either he will hate the
one and love the other, or he will sustain
the one and despise the other." Or
again: "He that is not with Me is
against Me."

-31-



 



 



This booklet is published

by

LIGUORIAN PAMPHLET OFFICE

REDEMPTORIST FATHERS

LIGUORI, MISSOURI

First Printing, 1952

Reprinted from The Liguorian, a Catholic

monthly magazine published with

ecclesiastical approval

�11