by Christopher Hodapp
If you you thought the Catholic Church and Freemasonry had finally stopped firing cannonballs at each other over the battlements, Europe has supplied a couple of reminders that this particular 300-year-old family quarrel isn't over. Not by a long shot.
In August, Catholic bishops in Italy refused church funeral rites for two prominent Freemasons, while a French archbishop conducted Catholic funeral ceremonies for another very public Mason. Then, just to make the whole thing even more incendiary, the newly elected Grand Master of France's largest — but irregular and unrecognized by mainstream Anglo-American Freemasonry — Masonic obedience announced that private schools operating outside the French government's contract educational system "have no place in the Republic."
Naturally, Catholic commentators promptly announced that the Freemasons had declared war on Catholic schools.
Well...sort of.
NO MASS FOR YOU
In early August, Cardinal Baldassare Reina, Pope Leo XIV's Vicar General for the Diocese of Rome, blocked the scheduled Catholic funeral Mass for 88-year-old classical guitarist Bruno Battisti D'Amario. (If you've ever listened to the classic soundtrack to the 60's spaghetti Western The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, you've heard his amazing guitar work.)
D'Amario was not just some obscure lodge member who'd paid dues for six months back in 1973 and forgotten about it. He had been an important figure in the regular, widely recognized Grand Orient of Italy (Grande Oriente d'Italia), and they publicly memorialized him as a prominent Masonic leader following his death. He had founded a lodge in Rome, served in senior positions within the grand lodge, and was identified in press accounts as a 33° Mason.
Unfortunately for his family, his Masonic obituary apparently tipped off Catholic authorities.
The funeral had already been scheduled for August 7th at Santa Maria in Montesanto — Rome's famous "Artists' Church" on the Piazza del Popolo — when church officials learned of D'Amario's Masonic career. The matter worked its way up the ecclesiastical food chain to Cardinal Reina, who consulted the diocesan legal office and refused permission for the funeral Mass.
A priest was permitted to pray privately with the family, and church officials stressed that Masses could still be offered later for the repose of D'Amario's soul. But no public Catholic funeral Mass.
One day later, Bishop Antonio Suetta of Ventimiglia-San Remo did essentially the same thing.
This time, the deceased was 73-year-old Mario Tarducci, who had served as Worshipful Master of a lodge near Bordighera. His Catholic funeral was already scheduled at St. Mark the Evangelist Church in Camporosso when Suetta learned of Tarducci's public Masonic membership and cancelled the ecclesiastical funeral rites.
Suetta subsequently issued guidelines making his position quite explicit: a Catholic who knowingly remains a Freemason and dies without some indication of repentance or renunciation can be denied a Catholic funeral.
This isn't something the bishops just made up last month.
Canon 1184 of the Catholic Church's Code of Canon Law says ecclesiastical funerals must be denied, unless there was some sign of repentance before death, to several categories of people — including "other manifest sinners who cannot be granted ecclesiastical funerals without public scandal of the faithful." Canon 1185 adds that anyone excluded from ecclesiastical funeral rites must also be denied a funeral Mass.
In other words, Rome's position on Freemasonry remains exactly what it has officially been since the 18th century.
When the revised Code of Canon Law appeared in 1983 without specifically naming Freemasonry, plenty of Catholics and Masons assumed the old prohibition had quietly disappeared. But Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — the future Pope Benedict XVI — promptly issued the Vatican's Declaration on Masonic Associations, approved by Pope John Paul II. It stated that the Church's negative judgment about Freemasonry remained unchanged because Masonic principles were considered "irreconcilable" with Catholic doctrine. Catholics who knowingly join Masonic associations, it said, are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion.
Pope Francis' Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith reaffirmed that position yet again in 2023 after a bishop in the Philippines asked what he was supposed to do about the growing number of Catholic Freemasons in his diocese.
So, whatever some individual priests may have told Catholic Masons over the years, officially the Vatican has never changed its mind.
BUT THEN CAME FRANCE
Two weeks after the Italian funeral cancellations came a much different scene in France.
François Patriat, 83, a longtime French senator, former government minister, former president of the Burgundy regional council and close political ally of President Emmanuel Macron, died August 19th following a bicycle accident. Patriat was also publicly known as a Freemason.
Nevertheless, on August 25th Archbishop Antoine Hérouard of Dijon personally presided over Patriat's Catholic funeral ceremony at the historic Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame in Semur-en-Auxois. Macron attended and delivered a eulogy.
Initial news accounts repeatedly called the service a funeral Mass, which made the contrast with Italy look even more dramatic.
Subsequent reporting, however, says the Diocese of Dijon confirmed that no Eucharistic Mass was actually celebrated. Hérouard presided over Catholic funeral rites and blessed the deceased, but there was no celebration of the Eucharist.
That's a fairly important distinction. It also demonstrates the considerable pastoral discretion involved in these cases. Canon law specifically says that when there is doubt, the local bishop is to be consulted and his judgment followed.
Still, to Catholic traditionalists, the optics were startling: two known Freemasons denied Catholic funerals in Italy, followed within weeks by an archbishop presiding over the very public church funeral of another Freemason in France with the President of the Republic sitting in the pews.
Cue the outrage machine.
The rabidly anti-Masonic (and noisome) militant crowd of fundamentalist Catholics immediately lit up their internet sites with indignant denunciations of "The Masons."
MEANWHILE, THE GRAND ORIENT PICKS A FIGHT
As if all of this wasn't enough to revive memories of Clement XII and his 1738 papal bull In Eminenti Apostolatus, another Masons-vs-Catholicism story erupted almost simultaneously.
On August 28th, Guillaume Trichard was elected Grand Master of the Grand Orient de France (GOdF) at its 161st annual Convent in Bordeaux. Trichard previously served as Grand Master in 2023-24.
If you're new to this subject, an important reminder is necessary here.
The Grand Orient de France (GOdF) is the largest Masonic body in France, but it is not recognized by the United Grand Lodge of England or by mainstream American grand lodges. The most widely recognized, regular Masonic body in France is the Grande Loge Nationale Française. The GOdF belongs to the liberal or "adogmatic" branch of Continental Freemasonry. It permits atheists, admits women, has long been aggressively secularist, becomes openly involved in political and social controversies, and has historically played an enormous role in France's battles over laïcité — the peculiarly French concept of absolute strict separation between religion and the state.
In other words, when the Grand Orient de France announces a public policy campaign, don't confuse it with your local Masonic lodge selling pancakes to buy a new roof for the Little League concession stand.
Unfortunately for the much wider world of regular, recognized Masonic bodies, the GOdF more often than not says or does things that affirm many of the crazier accusations leveled at "the Freemasons." There is a long history of the Grand Orient taking a public stand against Catholic institutions. Which brings us to current events.
Upon taking office, Grand Master Trichard announced an aggressively public agenda, calling for the Grand Orient's approximately 1,400 lodges to conduct at least one public action before next year's Convent (annual communication) — including lectures, exhibitions, charitable activities and even "intervention in a school or university" — all with the stated goal of bringing Grand Orient values into the public square.
Then Trichard gave an interview to Le Figaro. And that's when things got hot.
Trichard announced that the GOdF would shortly issue a white paper on "the school of the Republic." Although he said he did not intend to reopen the entire debate between private and public education, he added: "I consider that private schools outside contract have no place in the Republic."
His explanation was that schools operating hors contrat — outside the French state's contractual education system — do not have a "contract with the indivisible, secular, democratic and social Republic," which he said creates the possibility of abuses.
In response, Catholic publications promptly accused the Grand Orient of launching an offensive against Catholic education. More than one source blurted the headline, "Freemasons Declare War On Catholic Schools!"
Well, not exactly.
Trichard did not say, "Catholic schools have no place in France," and internet graphics circulating afterward that claimed he wanted to "ban the freedom of Christian schools" appear to have exaggerated or altered what he actually said. Imagine that.
France's hors contrat schools are not exclusively Catholic. They include Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and other alternative educational institutions. Most French Catholic schools operate under contract with the state, so Trichard's remarks do not amount to a proposal to abolish Catholic education in France.Still, what he actually said is controversial enough without gussying it up.
These are legal private schools, subject to state inspections and various national education requirements. France's Federation of Parents of Independent Schools blasted Trichard's remarks, arguing that freedom of education is itself protected under French law and that operating outside a government contract does not place a school outside the Republic.
Supporters of Trichard fired right back. A coalition of secularist organizations issued a statement backing him and declaring that "the only free school is the secular school."
So no, the Grand Orient de France has not actually "declared war on Catholic schools."
But Trichard has clearly decided to officially drag the Grand Orient into France's school wars. And for anyone who knows French Masonic history, that should produce a powerful sensation of déjà vu.
EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN
The irony in all this is tough to miss.
In Italy, Catholic bishops are dusting off rules barring practicing Freemasons from Catholic funeral rites because Masonry is supposedly incompatible with Catholicism.
At almost precisely the same moment, France's largest Masonic organization is loudly reasserting the militant secularism that helped convince generations of Catholic churchmen that Freemasonry really was incompatible with Catholicism in the first place.
And around we go.
It does bear repeating that an estimated 25% of American and European Freemasons regard themselves as Catholics. If you accept the wild-guess figure that there are about 1 million American Masons and perhaps 4-5 million Freemasons in the world these days, there could be 250,000 Catholic Masons in this country, and a million or so globally. And they disagree with the official policy of the Church because they know full well that regular, recognized Freemasonry does not conflict with Church theology in any way. It's not the first time that a vast crowd of Catholics believed that the Church was wrong in its condemnation of its own faithful flock, and they simply ignore it.
Or to paraphrase the old Chinese saying, Heaven is high and the Pope is far away.
For American Freemasons, especially, it is worth remembering that "Freemasonry" does not mean precisely the same thing everywhere in the world. The politically active, secularist Grand Orient tradition in France is historically and philosophically quite different from the regular Anglo-American Masonic tradition. Unfortunately, the enemies of Freemasonry routinely stuff every Masonic organization on the planet into the same sack. The Catholic Church's rules certainly don't distinguish between them.
Which leaves us approximately where Pope Clement XII and the Freemasons found themselves in 1738.
Only now everybody has social media.
