Secret handshakes that attack faith?

TIM JESUIT fortnightly Catholic Civilisation has
recently said that "Christian" Masons risk finding themselves in a state of grave sin. The Freemasons of whom there are over 300,000 in the UK alone would say that their tenets are entirely compatible with those of the Catholic Church, but the Church does not seem to agree.
So who are the Freemasons? Are they a benevolent, mutual help organisation, or a secret society founded on sinister cabalistic rituals?
It is not easy to unravel fact from fiction, and this is largely due to the secTecy that permeates Freemasonry. As Masonic beliefs and rituals are revealed only to initiates, how can the outsider possibly judge whether Freemasonry is compatible with his faith?
It is this dilemma created by the very nature of Freemasonry, not by the Church's reaction to it that has caused the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to assert its "generally negative judgement in regard to Masonic associations" (published letter, 1983). The extraordinary antics of P2 lodge members during the late 1970s and early 1980s, culminating in a fullblown scandal involving murder, fraud and corruption at the Ambrosiano Bank, did nothing whatever to improve the already sullied image of Freemasonry in Vatican eyes.
Six papal bulls of the 18th and 19th centuries successively proscribed Freemasonry; and in the catechism of Church law, to the question "is there any ruling which might be understood as applying to Freemasonry?" the reply is, "anyone who joins any association which plots against the Church may properly be punished, and anyone who promotes or controls such an association may be punished with an interdict". It is clear that the Church regards Masonry as potentially hostile.
It was not ever thus. Whatever claims may be made for the ancient roots of Freemasonry, its more modem history is not too hard to trace. The free-thinking lodges of the 17th and 18th centuries, with their anti-clerical tendencies, grew out of the medieval Guild of Stonemasons. Popularly known as Free Masons, they enjoyed the Church's patronage in a great age of church-building to a remarkable degree. They were unique among the guilds; so valuable were their skills that they become peripatetic, international, open to a cross-fertilisation of ideas. For a while, they had the protection of the Benedictines; more sinisterly, they also had a long association with the Knights Templar, with the result (according to the Catholic
Dictionary) that "the symbolic allusions to Solomon and his Temple (were) passed from the knights into the Masonic formulary. In this way, after their suppression, some of the Knights, maintaining their influence over the Freemasons, would be able to pervert what had hitherto been a harmless ceremony into an elaborate ritual that w(Aild impart some of the errors of the Templars to the initiated". There is a clear implication, here, of heresy.
What, then, are,the "elaborate rituals" of the Masons, and what do they signify? Paul Pickering, educated at a Masonic school after the death of his Freemason father, warns that in the absence of information available to non-initiates, all sort of wild rumours abound: "you'll hear that the Name of God incorporates the Canaanite God Baal, that the deity manifests itself as a many-headed creature, that the lodges are dominated by the police and the higher ranks of the army all nonsense, unfortunately, because the idea of policemen in Esher worshipping a seven-headed blue spider has always rather appealed to me."
What we do know of their rituals, however, indicates a reality no less exotic, if perhaps somewhat more solemn. The three ceremonies governing admission to the grade of Master Mason relate to the building of Solomon's temple, and other grades of initiation involve rituals referring to the birth and death of "the apprentice", to punishments visited upon the betrayers of secrets, and to the earliest relationships between the Israelite kingdom and its Levantine neighbours. They are, according to one ex-Mason who does not wish to be named, based on "an extraordinary hybrid of diluted history and total clap-trap". As to the significance of these rituals, the Church has taken exception to the Masonic image of God as "the Great Architect", a blind, mechanical force governing the universe, devoid of the Christian concept of Divine Love and open to pagan or dualist interpretation. John Hamill of Freemason's Hall would refute any suggestion that Christianity and Freemasonry are incompatible. "The three central principles of Masonry", he says, "are brotherly love, relief, and truth. if anything, we find that people's religion is often reinforced by their membership of a lodge. We insist on a belief in God as a condition of joining, and beyond that we don't pry into people's beliefs, as the two things we are forbidden to discuss are religion and politics. And, by the way, we interpret brotherly love as, broadly speaking,
tolerance." His liberal and urbane attitude comes as no surprise in the light of the Catholic Dictionary's assertion that "English-speaking Freemasons usually disown for their order any aims but those of a convivial mutualbenefit society, and... have usually been accustomed to regard the pantheism of their rituals as an amusing mummery rather than as a reality." In other words, it's all acceptable as long as one does not take it too seriously. But
why all those hours spent in dreary closed rooms wearing the famous one glove and apron and other assorted paraphernalia, those evenings after work learning Masonic formulae by rote, if the basic tenets of Masonry are not to be taken seriously?
The whole thing would seem like a harmless boys' game were it not for the veil of secrecy. One Masonic motto is Aude, Vide, Tace: Hear, See and Be Silent. It is hard to see why a "convivial mutual-benefit society" should need to operate within security classifications. It does seem to be the case that English-speaking Masonry, despite all the secrecy, is a generally harmless affair; it has even been argued that extremes of behaviour and belief do not sit well with the luke warm Anglo-Saxon temperament. We certainly don't envisage our more respectable Freemasons, such as the Duke of Kent, throwing bankers off bridges with weights in their pockets, or plotting to overthrow the established Church by means of blackmail and bribery.
What we do, however, envisage is that if we go for a job interview with a man wearing funny cuff-links, the other candidate who knows how to wriggle his finger when shaking hands will be more likely to get onto the short list than we will. And to the extent that we dislike powerful Old Boys' networks (as most women do, for a start) we will dislike the idea of Masonry.
Catholic Civilisation's condemnation of those who become Masons "nor out of conviction, but of ulterior opportunistic motives" is thus significant, for why else should any Catholic join the Masons, given the risks of ending up worshipping a seven-headed blue spider or an obsolete Canaanite idol?
If we are suspicious of Freemasonry, it is hardly to be wondered at; we publish a Catechism and a Creed, they conceal their manifesto. They do, however, do a very great deal of admirable charitable work in their local communities; if we could emulate them in this, we would have little more to learn from them, and no reason to join.