Chairman's Blog

Since Freemasonry is regarded as significant by Pope Francis, as well as many previous popes and in various private revelations by the Blessed Virgin Mary, I thought I'd try to educate myself a little about it. I can't say I've come to any very exciting conclusions, but I can recommend a couple of books, and make a few observations.

My interest has been in the philosophy (or religion, or ideology) of Freemasonry, as opposed to the extent it has, or fails to have, influence in local or world events. The second subject is one where reliable information is obviously going to pretty difficult to find, and I think that Freemasonic influence over the Church, specifically, is going to be of importance only if it is connected with a philosophy which is opposed to the Church's teaching. Many dubious people have had undue influence over the Church locally, or in Rome, over the centuries, but if what they are after is money or prestige then the damage they do to the Church, while real, is at least comprehensible and repairable. The ultimate threat to the Church, against which Christ has given his ultimate guarantee, is not prelatial nephews spending the revenues of dioceses they never visit on wine, women and song, or criminal gangs arranging flamboyant funerals for deceased mobsters, disedifying though these are, but the Church ceasing to proclaim the Gospel because of the influence of an alien ideology.

So here are a couple of books. The classic study of British Freemasonry is Darkness Visible by Walton Hannah, first published in 1952. An excellent recent account is Masonry Unmasked by John Salza (2006), from an American perspective. The aim of each of these books is the same: to demonstrate, from the rituals used by Freemasons, that it has philosophical and religious claims which are incompatible with orthodox Christianity.

Hannah wrote his book as an Anglican cleric, at a time when several Anglican bishops were masons. They managed to prevent any official investigation or discussion of the subject, but the book's exposure of the issues brought a gradual end to the era of such close entanglement between Masonry and the Established Church. Nevertheless, Hannah later became a Catholic and a priest. Salza was a Catholic who became a mason after being told that there was nothing much wrong with it, for a Catholic; he found out more, as a mason, and realised that there was, and left it. Freemasonry is a religious system incompatible with Christianity; if most masons don't take this system very seriously, there is even less reason to commit oneself to it formally. As Hannah points out, the make-believe quality of the oaths and rituals, if that is going to be the defence, only serves to emphasise that in taking them one is guilty of the sin of rash swearing. But as a matter of fact there are masonic writers whose mystical interpretations of the rituals are the same of writers like Hannah and Salza.

The Masonic religio-philosophical system is, in a nutshell, that all religions are equally valid: members can swear their oaths on any holy text they like. Historically, the inspiration for the moral ideas and rituals comes from Christianity, with a bit of made-up ancient Egyptian mysticism. But Freemasonry also claims to have 'secrets' and a method of instruction which makes its members into an enlightened elite.

In this, Freemasonry is a fully-worked out example of Enlightenment liberalism, plus rituals, role-playing amateur dramatics, and silly handshakes. Liberals looks down at the world's religions and say, first, that they are all equally valid, and then, in the next breath, that they themselves have transcended such footling divisions. To say all religions are equally true is, of course, equivalent to saying that all are equally false, and it is not so surprising to find that the great division in the world of Freemasonry is between officially theistic masonry - the 'Grand Lodge' Masonry of the English-speaking world - and non-theistic and in practice anti-clerical masonry - the 'Grand Orient' Masonry of the Continent. The split occurred at the beginning of the 19th century, when the Grand Orient lodges rejected belief in God as an essential qualification for masons.

It is sometimes said by British masons that Catholic condemnations of Freemasonry refer to anti-clerical and historically anti-ancien regime Grand Orient masonry, not the kind which can happily include among its members British Kings and an Archbishop of Canterbury. However, as Hannah points out, this is not so, since many such condemnations date from before the split, and even later ones note religious indifferentism as a major issue, a criticism which ceases to be applicable when you tip over the edge into atheism. In fact the condemnations apply to both kinds, and to their many splinter-groups. It is enough to point out that they deny the unique significance of the Christian revelation, engage in unjust or at best rash swearing, and, despite official denials, seek to establish obligations which supersede those of Church and State.

Hannah gives a nice illustration of this. When looking into Freemasonry, he wrote, as an Anglican in orders, to bishops who where known to be masons, asking them for guidance as to how he should address the concerns of members of his flock about Freemasonry. They replied that they were not at liberty to discuss the matter. In other words, their masonic obligations took precedence over their episcopal obligation to provide guidance to those under their charge. This is the more remarkable in that the typical response of Anglican clerical masons to criticisms was to play down the reality of masonic obligations and the importance of the 'secrets': which had, after all, been published by masonic publishers, in easily decipherable code, for many years, accompanied by numerous exposes even before Hannah's supremely systematic and accurate one.

The situation is richly absurd, in that everyone can pore over masonic rituals, read masonic interpretations of them, and have a public debate on the subject, except the masons themselves, who, in Hannah's day and (I get the impression) today also, remain on the sidelines bleating feebly that it is all harmless fun but they can't go into details.

The question then is: when (for example) Our Lady of Good Success in Quito warns of the influence of masons, when Popes up to and including Pope Francis warn about 'Masonic lobbies', what exactly are we being warned against? It might seem unfair to point the finger at a dwindling British band of rather conservative, establishment types, who may give each other preferential treatment in dubious ways but hardly seem a threat to world peace. But actually, I think the fact that Anglicanism was riddled with Freemasonry at the eve of the great cultural and moral crisis of the 20th century does help explain why it collapsed so quickly and so completely: it didn't really believe in itself. Again, the fact that significant numbers of establishment types are still consoling themselves with 18th century allegorical morality tales of supreme superficiality, instead of either doing anything about public culture or availing themselves of the graces available from Our Lord and Saviour, helps explain why the 'small-c' conservative response to the continuing decay of this country is so consistently flaccid.

So I think the poison of religious indifferentism is at least part of what is being warned against. Today we see religious indifferentism raised to the level of a sort of official religion, in schools and in governments, both local and central. One may say that Freemasonry has triumphed, even if as an institution it has seen better days. If indifferentism, or indifferentism which has evolved into practical atheism, is a motive force for organised campaigning groups, whether these groups be derived from formal Freemasonry or not, one may, again, say that the spirit of Freemasonry is active in them. And indeed such groups exist within the Church, and it makes little difference whether they identify with Freemasonry or not: what matters is what they believe, and the effect they are having.

It is obvious that you can't proclaim the Gospel unless you believe in it. If you think that the Gospel is no better than any other religion, and that you and your enlightened friends can look at all these belief systems from a great, patronising height, then you don't believe in the Gospel. To that extent that this attitude permeates the Church, the Freemasons have won.

Maybe it is actual, professed masons doing the bad things in the Church; if so, we'll probably never know. What we do know is how to oppose the errors of their ideology: with the truth of the Gospel.

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The celebrant was Fr John Saward, Priest in Charge at SS Gregory & Augustine's. We always have candles all round the church for Epiphany.

The Schola Abelis was led by Dominic Bevan.

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Now that you've remembered that you forgot to get one of these, you still can! Yours for £7 from the LMS website here.

It opens up to a list of dates arranged vertically, giving you much more space than in the usual formats to write things in, with our lovely photos arranged down the left.

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Ever mindful of feedback, we will be using this slightly revised, less cluttered cover when the booklet is reprinted. The contents will also have some tiny, and I mean tiny, corrections.

One of the reasons we at the Latin Mass Society created a booklet of the Ordinary of the Mass was because the widely-used red 'Booklet Missal' produced by the Coalition in Support of Ecclesia Dei is American and contains some American feasures, such as the American version of the Prayer to St Michael. We also thought we could do better in certain ways.

You can buy it here.

While we were still thinking about this, the Catholic Truth Society brought one out. That is a good thing; it is good that the the CTS is using its considerable market penetration to spread knowledge about the Traditional Mass, in a handy pocket format with a smart leatherette cover. The only problem is that this booklet contains a series of mistakes.

A second edition was published, and I thought they might address some of these, but in fact the only difference, as far as I can see, is the title: it is now called 'The Extraordinary Form of the Mass' instead of 'The Traditional Latin Mass'.

So what are these mistakes?

First, there are a series of misdirections as to who is saying what.
At the Pater Noster (the Our Father, before Communion) it directs 'S', the server, to say the it up to and including 'et ne nos inducas in tentationem', when it says 'S/C' (Server or Choir) to say 'Sed libera nos a malo', adding 'This is sung at High Mass'.

This makes no sense at all. The Pater Noster is never said by the Server, but the Server (or the choir) responds 'Sed libera nos a malo'.

Some bright spark at the CTS objected to their title 'The Traditional Latin Mass'. Fine, but what about the mistakes?

It is true that there is an obscure option for the congregation to say or sing the Pater Noster, among the many complicated options for dialogue Masses given in 1958. But the point of this, of course, is that it is said by the congregation, not the Server. Directing the Server to say it is simply wrong. And anyway, the CTS booklet hasn't gone into all the other complicated options, which are never used in England. I suspect the confusion here has come from practice at the Novus Ordo.

A different kind of confusion is at work in the Agnus Dei, where the book tells us that it is 

Then the booklet tells us that 'Omnes', 'All', say 'Domine non sum dignus' before the Communion of the Faithful. Now this does sometimes happen, and I don't object to it happening, but it is not a response: it is said by the Priest. If they people say it, that is a pious custom, but they don't replace the Priest at this point. 

In addition, there are a series of errors about when things are said at all.

The Asperges / Vidi Aquam are marked by a red line, the meaning of which, we are informed, is that they are 'found only in solemn (High) Masses'. Presumably 'solemn (High) Mass' is Missa Solemnis, Mass with deacon and subdeacon, normally called in the UK 'High Mass'. But the Asperges is also said at Missa Cantata, Sung Mass without deacon and sub. (There is also a note saying, correctly, that they are said at the 'principal Mass on Sunday'.)

One of the illustrations in the LMS book.

On the Psalm Iudica, the booklet tells us '(Omit during Passiontide)'. This is approximately true (it is not omitted during Passiontide at the celebration of festal or votive Masses), but it would be a lot more useful to know that it is omitted at Masses for the Dead, including, for example, Remembrance Sunday.

Despite various references to what happens at High or Sung Masses, the booklet makes no mention of the Pax at High Mass, which ought to be there with a red line next to it like the prayer said over the Deacon before the sings the Gospel at High Mass, which we find on p20. There is also no reference to the Pontifical blessing at Masses (High or Low) said by Bishops.

One of the strangest things in the booklet is that it tells us that 'Prayer for the Dead is sometimes added' to the Prayers after Low Mass, giving the text of the De Profundis. I have never encountered this, and it is not in the Ritus Servandus. If it is done, it would be a private initiative of the priest. It is extremely strange to print it in a tiny book to help people follow Mass. 

If we are going to include things unofficially added at the end of Mass, then the obvious thing to include is the Marian Anthem, nearly always sung at the end of Sung and High Masses in this country: but the CTS booklet does not do so.

It also says about the Prayers after Low Mass that they are 'now optional'. This is simply not true. If anyone is inclined to disagree, I would like to see the decree which made them so. In the rules in force in 1962, there are a number of specific cases in which they are optional, but the rule remains that they be said at public Low Masses other things being equal. The red booklet unhelpfully points out that they are not in the 1962 Missal, neglecting to mention that they are not in any other Missal either. There were suppressed in 1964 by Inter Oecumenici, which implies of course they they still existed officially up to then.

The rest of this editorial paragraph is also wrong. It says they were first instituted by Leo XIII: no, they were changed and universalised by him, but they were instituted by Pius IX. It says that Pius XI 'directed that they be said for the conversion of Russia': well, this is widely believed but it is not accurate; what he said was this:

Therefore we must press upon Christ the Redeemer of the human race that he allow tranquillity and the freedom to profess the faith to be restored to the afflicted children of Russia. 

Anyone interested in this topic can read the Position Paper on the Prayers after Low Mass; start with the post in this blog here.

Another illustration.

Similarly, the booklet tells us, of the 'Prayer for the Queen', that it is 'Customarily said after the principal Mass on Sunday'. This seems to be a sneaky way of suggesting that it is optional. Again, it is not. It had been mandated by the Bishops of England and Wales, as we see in the Ritus Servandus; that mandate was in force in 1962; that mandate should be followed, in England and Wales, at the Extraordinary Form, today. If it doesn't always happen, that isn't such a big deal, but it's not the place of a little booklet like this to change liturgical law.

The attitude of the CTS in producing this booklet seems to have been that they didn't need to consult anyone who actually understands the Traditional Mass, and that they could stick in whatever their personal tastes, views, or eccentric devotions dictated. This is a disservice to the Church.

Another deficiency of the booklet worth mentioning is the complete absence of music. But then there are a lot of things missing from the booklet which could easily and usefully be included, such as Benediction and the Angelus, as well as as a lot of music, which we included in the LMS booklet. And our specially commissioned illustrations, helpful marginal notes about what is going on, and what seems to be the only accurate traditional Prayer for Wales in Welsh currently in print.

The Latin Mass Society's booklet has a huge amount of additional material, including beautifully printed chant notation and prayers for Holy Communion, and it can be purchased from the LMS website (or your friendly local church) for the extremely reasonable £3.75, with a stiff colour cover. There are discounts for bulk orders.

The leatherette CTS booklet will set you back £5.95; they also do a version in the format of one of their information booklets, for £2.50, but if you want something small and cheap, you can get one of the little blue booklets from the LMS for £1.50.

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