No. Masonry has no objection to the admission of a Catholic to the
Masonic fraternity. Whether the Roman Catholic Church objects to a
Catholic becoming a Freemason is their business, not ours. Masonry would
not counsel anyone to do something opposed by his religion.
The present position of the Church regarding Freemasonry is not
altogether clear; some sources indicate that the Vatican remains opposed
to any form of Freemasonry, others say that only those organizations
which “plot against the Church” (which Masonry does not) are proscribed,
and others see no problem. This is a matter for any individual Catholic
who might be interested in joining the Masons and his spiritual
advisor.
There is material in some of the degrees of the
appendant bodies of Freemasonry which might be interpreted as
anti-Catholic, particularly with reference to the history of the Knights
Templar and the death of Jacques DeMolay. But those events occurred
nearly 700 years ago! The Church of today is not the Church of the 14th
century. The Church itself has recognized that leaders of those times
made errors of various sorts; one need only look to the 20th century
canonization of Joan of Arc, burned in the 15th century as a heretic, or
the rehabilitation of Galileo, forced in the 17th century to recant his
scientific studies, to recognize this. The degrees of Masonry make no
mention of the Church in any other than remote historical context.
Freemasonry is the enemy of tyranny and despotism, not of any particular religion
or nationality. If the Church were to fall into the hands of the
heartless and rapacious, as it did in earlier times (the days of the
Borgias and the Medicis, not to mention Torquemada), it would be as much
the duty of every Catholic to denounce such behavior as it would be for
Freemasons – and modern-day Martin Luthers.
