I really shouldn't go here, because I'm sure FreemasonryWatch and other excitable spectators will pile on...
I'm supposed to be finishing a manuscript and shouldn't have time to read Masonic books, but I couldn't resist going through a new copy of John Salza's
Masonry Unmasked: An Insider Reveals The Secrets Of The Lodge. It is a book written to disuade Catholics from becoming Masons, and to encourage Catholics who are already Masons to leave the fraternity. There's even a special prayer for Catholic masons in the back of the book to encourage them to give up the evils of the Lodge.
Salza's not a dumb guy, and this is no shrill screed like other attempts by evangelicals who are angry that they aren't allowed to proselytize in Lodge. And it's because of its calm tone in the beginning that I was so disappointed by the book. I don't have any problem with Salza dragging out all of the
papal bulls and decrees since 1736 against Masonic membership – the official position of the Church is based on canon law and papal interpretation of that law. And if modern Catholics are comfortable with those interpretations and the doctrine of papal infallibility when speaking
ex cathedra, then they must obey those rules to the letter and stay out of Freemasonry. Along with the
Rotary and the
Lions and the
Odd Fellows and the
Knights of Pythias.
Obviously by the number of Catholics in America, Mexico, South America, Italy, the Philippines and elsewhere who become Masons in spite of those papal strictures, there is a disconnect between what the Church alleges about Freemasonry and what the individual Mason finds within the Lodge. The 21st century Mason is not likely to find anti-Catholic scheming going on in his lodge, and certainly not at the Grand Lodge, or national appendant body level. That hasn't ALWAYS been true, as Salza rightly points out. The AASR-Southern Jurisdiction spent decades locked in a loud, public battle against Catholicism in the New Age magazine. Almost every issue, up until the election of John F. Kennedy, contained at least one article that swiped at "popery, monkery, the Romish church, papists," and most especially in America, Catholic schools. The period right after the Civil War, and again between the two World Wars were times in America of widespread anti-Catholic distrust and hatred. The Masons didn't have a corner on that market. Catholics had been a persecuted minority in the colonial days, and only Maryland was briefly tolerant of Catholics before the American Revolution. For all of the talk in the First Amendment about religious freedom, an overwhelming number of the founders would have trusted a Libyan "Musselman" before they'd have let a Catholic move in next door.
The biggest complaint of the Church in the end of the 18th century had nothing to do with whether Freemasonry was a false religion or not. It had to do with the "free thinkers" who were members of lodges who encouraged the sort of freedom of thought and expression that toppled kings from their thrones and dislodged popes from their positions as interpreters of scripture and lawmakers on all things spiritual. Popes saw the handwriting on the wall if more countries went the way of the American colonies. Indeed, when the Papal States were whittled down from a massive block of property across the south of France and Italy to just a few square blocks in Rome in the 1860s, at the hands of Freemasons like Garibaldi, along with Catholic holdings in central and South America by revolutionaries who were Masons, obviously the Church saw nothing but enemies being bred in Lodges. That is why the Church made Masonic membership an act of grave sin, and said that Masons fought against the Church. Masons really did.
Freemasonry in the US hasn't fought openly or covertly against the Church in decades. All that jazz about stomping on the papal tiara in the 30° of the Southern Jurisdiction of the Scottish Rite was because Albert Pike was a Protestant who lived through the most overheated period of Catholic hatred in history. (Look up the
Know Nothings and the "Pope Stone" in the Washington Monument sometime. Pike was a piker when it came to catholic bashing.) Those sentiments are long gone, and most Americans haven't given Catholicism a second thought since 1960, except when unfortunate headlines appear about priests and altar boys. The Church has a whole lot more to worry about than the effect of Freemasons on it.
(I burst out laughing while reading the otherwise excellent
Good-Bye Good Men by Michael Rose over references to "evil" Masons having some kind of terrible influence on Catholic seminaries. Salza repeats the episode, and both authors imply that a Past Master of a Masonic lodge is so indoctrinated in indifferentism that he couldn't possibly have a favorable opinion of Christianity or Catholicism outside of the lodge in his personal or professional life. Balderdash. Stop looking under the bed for Masonic boogeymen – you have enough troubles of your own. The radical gay movement that dominated the Catholic seminaries in the 1970s and 80s had precisely ZERO to do with Freemasonry, and you both know it.)
But what bothers me most is that Salza was a Mason for several years, and he knows just what goes on in lodge and what does not. The same old evangelical gripe comes out – that Masons "exclude" the worship of Christ in Lodge and replace it with an indifferent, generic "Grand Architect of the Universe." Salza knows darn well why overt Christianity – or Judaism, or Islam, or Bahai, or Buddhism, or Hinduism, or Scientology, or Tennessee snake handling – is forbidden in the lodge. It is so that each member may privately worship God in his own manner, however he sees fit, without intruding on the beliefs of his Brother, because a man's personal faith is NONE OF THE LODGE'S BUSINESS. But Salza plays the usual rhetorical game, of dragging out good old Albert Mackey's moldy quote from 1873 that "Freemasonry is a religion." Never mind that Salza would be hard-pressed to find a single Masonic scholar after 1960 who agreed with that sentiment. And I have yet to find a Grand Lodge that comments publicly on the issue that does not categorically state that Freemasonry is NOT a religion.
Salza quotes from Henry Wilson Coil's
Encyclopedia citing Coil's opinion of Masonry as a religion. In the revised 1996 edition of the Encyclopedia the entry (probably written by Allen E. Roberts) says that individual Masons may wind up trying to use the fraternity as a substitute for religion, but that's a personal choice. Let me quote from the summary:
Religion is an important even a necessary element in the life of a man or a nation. Man's feet are upon the ground but his soul aspires to the Infinite. Intimations of immortality are all around us, manifest to savage and civilized alike. Religion touches everything, but it must be understood that Freemasonry is not "a religion." As a whole, it has no dogma, not theology. It has no plan of salvation and most importantly it claims no divine origin. To tear out the religious threads from the fabric of Freemasonry would almost destroy the garment just as removing all religious and philosophical thoughts, works and ideas from any library would empty its shelves. Freemasonry is a learning place open to all men of good report and inventions. It teaches universal moral principles. It has a vast depository of religious history and teachings. It is a powerful influence for good in the world. Thousands of clergy, of all faiths, have been and are Freemasons. They see it not as a religion, but a firm foundation stone upon which they can continue to build.
Freemasonry is not and never has been a religion. It has been for centuries past and will be for centuries to come the custodian and teacher of religious philosophy and truth."
(Coil's Masonic Encyclopedia, p. 518 – "Religion")
Coil's doesn't speak for Freemasonry any more than Mackey did – those are their opinions. But if Salza had called the Grand Lodge of Wisconsin, my guess is that every
current Grand Lodge officer would have assured him that Freemasonry is not a religion. That is the only official statement that should be of any consequence to him, as a Wisconsin Mason.
I don't mind if Salza defends his stance on Catholicism and Freemasonry, but I wish he'd do it honestly. At the back of my mind, I guess what really bothers me about this book is something that may seem trivial to most people. Salza became a Mason and was by his own description an excellent ritualist (which makes me wonder if he learned just the words, or the intent of the words – but that's another day). He became an officer in his lodge. And he took the same obligation that all Masons took. He could have written a well-documented book on the subject without resorting to making a specific point of telling all of the ritual ceremonies, passwords and signs, with a childish "ah-HA!" enthusiasm. As I say, he seems to be a fairly well-read man, with a strong moral conviction – after all, he did leave the Lodge when he sensed a conflict between it and his faith. I can't complain about that. But he knows, or should have known, that the secrets of Masonry that all Masons promise not to reveal have nothing to do with some deep, dark motive of secrecy in the normal sense of the word. Masonic secrecy is about honor, about trust, and about keeping one's word – in the context of gentlemanly behavior handed down to us since the 1700's. The world won't stop on its axis if a Mason tells someone a password or a handshake, knowing full well that the bookstore is filled with exposés of Masonic ritual. But he loses his sense of honor when he does it. And I guess that's one more reason why I regard his book as dishonest, because with all of his talk about fidelity to his faith in God, he gave up part of his honor to men.
I was raised as a Catholic, but like many Catholics, I had – and still have – profound disagreements with Rome on a variety of issues. Those are my issues to sort out, and Salza makes a few compelling points, when viewed through the narrow prism of papal encyclicals. But he is dead wrong when he bases his arguments on Masonry being a religion, on especially U.S. Masonry fighting against the Church, and on the nonsense that Masonry teaches a means of salvation that is in conflict with Christianity. Masonry is silent on ALL religions within the confines of a lodge meeting, and I have no more business dragging Christianity into it than I do into a City-Council meeting or a trial courtroom or the floor of the UN, or any other place that is designed to be silent on creed. Freemasonry teaches each man to take a more active interest in his own faith, whatever it may be. If a man is seeking fraternalism that is strictly Catholic-specific, he should become a
Knight of Columbus. Freemasonry has always attempted to unite good men, not divide them, and the prohibition of religion and politics as items of discussion within lodge occurred for specific historical reasons.
I should point out that Salza is an attorney, and he contends that Freemason Franklin D. Roosevelt de-Christianized America by stacking the Supreme Court with Masonic justices who bitterly fought for strict separation of Church and State. He seems to regard that as bad, while I'm guessing he'd be in the minority of most citizens.
His website is a fascinating treasure trove of his orthodox views, guided by strict adherence to Catholic doctrine. For instance, his views on an Earth-centered universe:
Geocentrism is the view that the earth is the center of the universe, and that the universe (sun, moon, stars, planets) revolves around the earth. Most geocentrists also believe that the earth stands still, and does not rotate on its axis. Geocentrism is in contrast to heliocentrism, which is the view that the earth rotates on its axis and, along with the other planets, revolves around the sun. While it is permissible for Christians to hold the heliocentric view, heliocentrism can only be advanced as a theory, not a certainty (because neither heliocentrism nor geocentrism can be scientifically proven definitively). In fact, three Popes (Paul V, Urban VIII and Alexander VII) have officially declared that heliocentrism is opposed to Sacred Scripture, and condemned the notion that heliocentrism was a truth to be believed with certainty. Instead, the Scriptures, the Apostolic Tradition and teachings of the Church support a geocentric cosmology vis-à-vis a heliocentric one. Nota Bene: I am a faithful Catholic, not a scientist. I am obedient to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. When presented with a question of faith (such as how God created the universe), I look to the Scriptures, the Tradition and the teachings of the Catholic Church for the answer. I do not rely upon modern scientists who have been unable to prove heliocentrism and disprove geocentrism, especially those who deny the inerrancy of Scripture and generally abhor the Catholic faith.
How he can rationalize away little things like satellite observations and deep-space probes of the last several decades, I have no idea. But if this is the kind of reasoning he uses in a courtroom, he has fools for clients, or at least owes them a refund.
I daresay that Salza is a young enough guy that he has never lived in a world that was openly antagonistic to Catholics on a widespread basis, the way it has existed in other periods in the U.S. (Charles Carroll, one of the richest men in the colonies, was the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence, and there was a group within Congress who wanted to keep his name off of it, because of his faith). The stupidity of groups like the Klan claiming Catholics were buying land in the Midwest to build a new Vatican, led to armed vigilantes keeping watch up and down the National Road looking for Catholic real estate scouts. Those days are long gone. But there is a renewed effort in the Church that seems to be raising the specter of evil Freemasonry, on the grounds that it is anti-Christian and teaches indifferentism. The Church has far more problems today than infiltration by Masons, and is in need of reexamining its position. However, with
Pope Benedict XVI on the throne of Peter, who wrote the 1983 decision reaffirming condemnation of Masonry, that doesn't seem likely for some time.
(* Please note that I have revised this article to reflect information that the edition of Coil's that I was quoting from is the 1996 edition that was revised by Allen E. Roberts. In the 1961 version, I am given to understand, Coil DID in fact claim Masonry was a religion, perhaps building on Mackey's earlier statements. The Encyclopedia has been revised to reflect different and more recent scholarship. Again, the danger of of applying one Mason's opinion to the fraternity – Coil's, Mackey's, mine or Salza's.)
I had the singular honor of speaking to about 100 brethren on Friday night at the Henry Wilson Coil Masonic Museum in San Francisco. Alice and I had an incredible weekend in San Francisco, and I owe a huge note of thanks to Worshipful Brother Adam Kendall. It was a great opportunity to meet so many brethren I have only known electronically, and make new friends as well. And many, many thanks to the brethren of the Southern California Research Lodge for all they have done to promote Freemasons For Dummies and Solomon's Builders.
