During his recent week-long visit to England Bishop Athanasius Schneider gave an interview to the Catholic website OnePeterFive. Bishop Schneider gives many such interviews, and his opinions make for very good copy because, like him or loathe him, he is refreshingly forthright in his delivery.
In the midst of this most recent interview, conversation suddenly turned to Freemasonry, and Bishop Schneider warmed to the theme, implying that a certain level of Masonic infiltration of the Church was likely, even logical, and that, even if they were not formal members of a Masonic lodge, “some bishops and cardinals speak clearly with a Masonic spirit”.
Catholics who talk about Masonic infiltrators are often, sometimes deservedly, dismissed as cranks. But Bishop Schneider is not some swivel-eyed internet sedevacantist, and many will have been baffled by his comments as much as if he had broken stride in an interview to warn about the dangers of monsters under the bed.
In fact, his comments were far from outlandish. The confusion which has greeted his intervention says less about the substance of his concerns and more about how understanding of the Church’s view of Masonry has devolved into a cartoonish image of sinister men in aprons plotting the demise of the Church. Political struggles to one side, the Church’s objections to Masonry have always been rooted in what it thinks, rather than what it does.
When the Grand Lodge of England was founded in 1717, Freemasonry had emerged as a network of gentlemen intellectuals who advanced the radically progressive ideas of what would become the Enlightenment, questioning both religious orthodoxy and the political status quo. But in the first papal condemnation of Masonry in 1738, Clement XII was clear that the danger of Masonry was one of faith, not politics. The true threat posed was not political radicalism, destabilising though it was, but religious indifferentism and moral relativism. Masons had their own ideas about truth, revelation, salvation, faith and morals, and these were not only different but opposed to the teaching of the Church. In the Masonic vision of a new society, there was as little room for the Church’s absolute views on faith and morals as there was for the absolute control of a king in civil affairs.
The battle between the Church and Freemasonry over the centuries is primarily one of ideas. On one side is the Church, seeking to preserve and expound the deposit of faith which she knows to be the objective truth; on the other is the progenitor of modern secular relativism, which sees the Church as a tyranny of conscience and thought, to be opposed and eliminated from the public sphere. This contest has continued through political, industrial and scientific revolutions up to the present day.
Through the first half of the 20th century, the Church faced explicitly Masonic challenges to her right to run schools, to evangelise and to speak on issues of public morals. But in the years following Vatican II, it began to be asked if, in the light of modern society and the impetus of the Council to engage with the world, it would be appropriate to repeal the Church’s canonical proscription of Masonry. The final redrafting of the Code of Canon Law famously omitted any explicit mention of Freemasonry. Many saw this as confirmation that the old paradigm of conflict was to be abandoned. In fact, the opposite was true.
In the years following the Council and during the redrafting of the Code, a number of dialogues were held with Masonic groups in various countries with a view to seeing if there really were, still, irreconcilable differences. Their conclusion, and the result of extended debate on the subject by the commission for the new code, was that yes, there were. The decision to remove the explicit mention of Freemasonry from canon law was taken, with considerable input from Cardinal Ratzinger, as a recognition that, in the modern world, so diffuse and accepted were Masonic ideals, especially religious indifferentism and moral relativism, that to retain a canon which condemned the Masons by name would fail to recognise that many groups and movements which were nothing like Masonic lodges in ritual, practice, or name were actually, in the mind of the Church, totally Masonic in ideology and just as dangerous.
As it happens, Masonry itself continues to be canonically proscribed and attached to a penalty of excommunication for Catholics, and this is particularly relevant in countries such as Italy, where Masonic lodges still, often, operate as a major political influence. But the wider concern of the Church, at the time of the new code’s promulgation and today, is with the battle against the relativistic ideals which have given rise to the contraceptive and divorce culture, the proclamation of abortion as a human right, and the escalating exclusion of the Church from acting in civil society.
Inside the Church, it is not uncommon for some clerics to privately, or even publicly, question basic moral teachings of the faith. When we consider the more extreme proposals floated in some quarters during the recent family synod, it is easy to see what Bishop Schneider meant by a “Masonic spirit”.
His description was philosophically and canonically correct. Those who dismiss it as sensationalist miss an opportunity to see the current struggles of the Church within centuries of proper context and to benefit from the wisdom of the past.
Edward Condon is a canon lawyer. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the history of the Catholic Church and Freemasonry
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