Relationship With The Catholic Church
| This article may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. |
Continental Freemasonry has been concentrated in traditionally Catholic countries and has been seen by Catholic critics as an outlet for anti-Catholic disaffection. Many particularly anti-clerical regimes in traditionally Catholic countries were perceived as having a strong Masonic connections.
The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia credited Freemasonry for the French Revolution and its persecution of the Church, citing a claim made in a document from the Grand Orient de France. The Encyclopedia saw Freemasonry as the primary force of French anti-clericalism from 1877 onwards, again citing official documents of French Masonry to support its claim. According to one historian, Masonic hostility continued into the early twentieth century with the Affaire Des Fiches and, according to the old Catholic Encyclopedia, the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State can be credited to the Grand Orient de France, based on Masonic documents.
In Italy the Church linked the anticlerical and nationalist secret society, the Carbonari, to Freemasonry and blamed the anticlerical direction of Italian Unification, or Risorgimento, on Freemasonry. Into the 1890s the Church would justify its calls for Catholics to avoid dealings with the Italian state with a reference to the state's supposed "Masonic" nature.
Mexican Freemasonry was also seen as following the pattern of Continental Freemasonry in other Latin-speaking countries, viewed as becoming more anti-clerical during the nineteenth century, particularly because they adopted the Scottish Rite degree system created by Albert Pike, which the Catholic Church saw as anti-clerical.
Even as late as 2005 the president of Spain's Union of Catholic Professional Fraternities blamed the anti-clerical measures of the Socialist government on a "tremendous crusade by Masonry against the Church."
Freemasons attached to the more mainstream branch of Freemasonry, affiliated with the United Grand Lodge of England and the 51 US Grand Lodges, have often claimed that the anticlericalism of the Continental Branch of Freemasonry is a "deviation" from proper Freemasonry.
Read more about this topic: Continental Freemasonry
Famous quotes containing the words relationship with the, catholic church, relationship with, relationship, catholic and/or church:
“Some [adolescent] girls are depressed because they have lost their warm, open relationship with their parents. They have loved and been loved by people whom they now must betray to fit into peer culture. Furthermore, they are discouraged by peers from expressing sadness at the loss of family relationships—even to say they are sad is to admit weakness and dependency.”
—Mary Pipher (20th century)
“In fact what America expects of its citizens and what the Catholic Church expects of the faithful are sometimes so different that they lead to an enormous ker-KLUNK between democracy and theology.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Every man is in a state of conflict, owing to his attempt to reconcile himself and his relationship with life to his conception of harmony. This conflict makes his soul a battlefield, where the forces that wish this reconciliation fight those that do not and reject the alternative solutions they offer. Works of art are attempts to fight out this conflict in the imaginative world.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“You do not mean by mystery what a Catholic does. You mean an interesting uncertainty: the uncertainty ceasing interest ceases also.... But a Catholic by mystery means an incomprehensible certainty: without certainty, without formulation there is no interest;... the clearer the formulation the greater the interest.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“When the Revolutionaries ran short of gun wadding the Rev. James Caldwell ... broke open the church doors and seized an armful of Watts’ hymnbooks. The preacher threw them to the soldiers and shouted, “Give ‘em Watts, boys—give ‘em Watts!””
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)