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wonderingCatholic
Guest
. . . . What exactly is a Freemason? I also read George Washington and a bunch of other presidents were Freemasons.
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C
Cruciferi
Guest
. . . .
en.m.wikipedia.org
Yes, some of the founding fathers and presidents were Masons.
Freemasonry - Wikipedia
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wonderingCatholic
Guest
If that’s the case were they Really Christian? The Catholic Church is against it I thought.
C
Cruciferi
Guest
By their standards, yes. Remember, the founding fathers weren’t perfect nor were they necessarily role models.
Charles Carroll of Carrollton was the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence. The majority of the founding fathers were Protestant.
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Maximian
Guest
Sorry but that simply isn’t the case. One Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England was King Edward VIi, Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
There has always been a close connection between freemasonry and Protestantism. There is also quite an overlap between freemasonry and orangeism.
M
Maximian
Guest
Freemasonry is diametrically opposed to the Catholic faith
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wonderingCatholic
Guest
Could you please explain how? This was the reason for the post.
M
Maximian
Guest
OK. I will give a single example, an excerpt from the Exhortation in the 3rd Degree.
The Master addresses the Candidate and sums up his masonic career so far.
“The secrets of Nature and the principles of intellectual truth were then unveiled to your view. To your mind, thus modelled by virtue and science, Nature, however, presents one great and useful lesson more. She prepares you, by contemplation, for the closing hour of existence: and when by means of that contemplation she has conducted you through the intricate windings of this mortal life, she finally instructs you how to die. Such, my Brother, are the peculiar objects of the Third Degree in Freemasonry.”
It is easy to miss the implications. According to this. a 2nd Degree Mason has had unveiled to him two things: “the secrets of Nature” (with a capital N) and the principles of “intellectual truth.” How does this differ from mere “truth?” There is only one Truth namely Jesus, the Logos, God’s Truth. To posit that there is something called “intellectual truth,” which is defined by and therefore subordinate to the human intellect and which differs from God’s truth, is the error underlying modernism, which St Pius X called “the synthesis of all heresy.”
No less significant is the claim that Nature has secrets which are unveiled to 2nd degree freemasons and thus not to others.
What or who is this “Nature?” The ritual tells us, and the word “thus” is critical. The mason’s mind was “thus” modelled by virtue and science, meaning that these correspond to Nature and intellectual truth. Presumably science equates to intellectual truth so Nature equates to virtue, which freemasonry is thus claiming to be the arbiter of.
Now the crux: this “Nature” which seems to mean the morality of which freemasonry is the sole guardian, does the following:
What is meant here by “die?” Why do you need instruction? If we leave aside the sinister possibility that these instructions may include recourse to suicide or euthanasia, it can only mean that it instructs you on how to attain salvation at the instant if death. The language has been so delicately phrased that most religious people would not notice how offensive is what is being proposed. Freemasonry is asserting that Nature, whose secrets it possesses, allows freemasons to engage in a contemplation of truth which their own intellect defines, in order to attain a perfect death and the salvation which that implies.
Exit our Lord’s Passion; exit Our Lady’s intercession; exit objective truth and goodness; exit God. Enter - who?
The Master addresses the Candidate and sums up his masonic career so far.
“The secrets of Nature and the principles of intellectual truth were then unveiled to your view. To your mind, thus modelled by virtue and science, Nature, however, presents one great and useful lesson more. She prepares you, by contemplation, for the closing hour of existence: and when by means of that contemplation she has conducted you through the intricate windings of this mortal life, she finally instructs you how to die. Such, my Brother, are the peculiar objects of the Third Degree in Freemasonry.”
It is easy to miss the implications. According to this. a 2nd Degree Mason has had unveiled to him two things: “the secrets of Nature” (with a capital N) and the principles of “intellectual truth.” How does this differ from mere “truth?” There is only one Truth namely Jesus, the Logos, God’s Truth. To posit that there is something called “intellectual truth,” which is defined by and therefore subordinate to the human intellect and which differs from God’s truth, is the error underlying modernism, which St Pius X called “the synthesis of all heresy.”
No less significant is the claim that Nature has secrets which are unveiled to 2nd degree freemasons and thus not to others.
What or who is this “Nature?” The ritual tells us, and the word “thus” is critical. The mason’s mind was “thus” modelled by virtue and science, meaning that these correspond to Nature and intellectual truth. Presumably science equates to intellectual truth so Nature equates to virtue, which freemasonry is thus claiming to be the arbiter of.
Now the crux: this “Nature” which seems to mean the morality of which freemasonry is the sole guardian, does the following:
- , She conducts you through life.
- She prepares you for the closing hour of your existence.
- She instructs you how to die.
What is meant here by “die?” Why do you need instruction? If we leave aside the sinister possibility that these instructions may include recourse to suicide or euthanasia, it can only mean that it instructs you on how to attain salvation at the instant if death. The language has been so delicately phrased that most religious people would not notice how offensive is what is being proposed. Freemasonry is asserting that Nature, whose secrets it possesses, allows freemasons to engage in a contemplation of truth which their own intellect defines, in order to attain a perfect death and the salvation which that implies.
Exit our Lord’s Passion; exit Our Lady’s intercession; exit objective truth and goodness; exit God. Enter - who?
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wonderingCatholic
Guest
Thank you for spelling that out for me. How could George Washington our anyone else be considered a Christian then? Or was he a free mason before and then converted?
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Maximian
Guest
Logically it can’t be done. But men are not creatures of logic and Protestants, especially nonconformists, are encouraged to seek their own interpretation of their faith.
Its just one more example of what happens when people are not careful to study the details and implications of the Christian faith.
By the way it’s not just Washington. Its most Presidents of the US, several kings of England, Churchill, Rudyard Kipling, Mozart, Garibaldi and most of the leaders of the Risorgimento, Frederick the Great, Casanova …
Its just one more example of what happens when people are not careful to study the details and implications of the Christian faith.
By the way it’s not just Washington. Its most Presidents of the US, several kings of England, Churchill, Rudyard Kipling, Mozart, Garibaldi and most of the leaders of the Risorgimento, Frederick the Great, Casanova …
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