by Fr Ashley Beck
Catholic Truth Society, Revised edition 2017.
This 80-page booklet is a measured, non-polemical assessment. The author is a Roman Catholic, but arguments are to do with the compatibility of Freemasonry and Christianity and are not ‘partisan’ in terms of denomination. It also includes a short section on the official stance of the Church of England.
Some Christian books or pamphlets on Freemasonry consider Freemasonry to be an evil system, whereas this booklet is much more reasonable, and points out to some of the oaths within Freemasonry that have recently been removed, and therefore has taken the time to listen to the counter arguments.
The author’s conclusion, however, is clear that Freemasonry is not compatible with Christianity. Here are a few quotes:
“Although Freemasonry claims to be “neither a religion nor a substitute religion” […] it has all the attributes of religion: temples, altars, prayers, a moral code, worship, vestments, feast days, the promise of reward or punishment in an after-life (“the Grand Lodge above”), and a hierarchy; if it is not a religion, what would it need to be one?” Pages 22-23.
“The God of Freemasons, depicted as an architect or a geometrician, is a “lowest common denominator”, or a deity reduced to the barest of attributes so as to be above human dissension and the disagreements which religion so often brings: he is also removed from human life and a figure whom men cannot know. […] Christian teaching about the Incarnation, in which the gulf between god and humanity is bridged forever by the person of Jesus Christ, is a serious threat to the whole Masonic belief system. The Christian faith of the Christian Mason becomes incidental: it does not need to be there.” Page 34.
“The Mason has no real need of grace, because he has done it all himself; moreover the figure of the suffering Christ on the Cross, vulnerable and weak, is an alien symbol which says nothing to him which he wants to hear – the Mason’s faith is essentially anthropocentric, centred on man.” Page 28.
June 2020
Adrian Vincent