It is easy to understand why Catholics might take it personally.
For me? I simply do not easily associate the ignorance of one person, in a group, to the entire group.
I see Masons who say or believe stupid things as individuals.
As a “secret society” however, it is easy to understand why some would think that the odd, or even bigoted beliefs, of ONE Mason, or Knight, might be the teachings of the “group” -—
And yes, brother Knights, I am aware that the Knights of Columbus says they are “not a ‘secret society’” I simply think that particular distinction is nonsense.
I think we are, every bit as much as the Masons, a “secret society” -— and I refuse to buy the distinctions some make.
The only distinction I see is that one is more catholic-friendly than the other. I tend to side with the catholics on many social and religious issues. I’ve heard the sentiment “ a true christian can’t be a mason” before, and I attribute the saying to the catholics. It’s even on this thread now. I tend to somewhat agree with it. That’s why the existence of the KofC seems to me to be extremely hypocritical.
The belief was (whether justified or not, I don't have enough information to say or not) that the Freemasons were, in large part, the French Revolution, Italian Revolution, and many of the anti-clerical movements around the world that plagued the late 18th and 19th Centuries.
But I think the largest part of the dispute is a Utopian belief that I have seen underscore a lot of Masonic thought. Basically that the Grand Architect gave us the earth and that it is up to us to use his tools to build the New Jerusalem: paradise on earth. Thus, there is a connection to some of the socialist theory developed in the 19th Century.
The theme of this year’s conference, ‘Visions of Utopia: masonic, religious and esoteric’, explored a variety of themes which either underpin, compliment, or run in parallel to, themes contained in the many of the degrees of Freemasonry. The word utopia in Greek means ‘no place’, and as such, the word has traditionally been used to allude to a perfect place or state, which is somewhat analogous to the masonic concept of an idealised temple or a well-ordered society.
The term was made famous by a statesman and humanist of the English Renaissance, Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), who in 1516, wrote of a fictional island called Utopia just off the Atlantic coast. As Dr. Chloe Houston, a lecturer in early modern literature at the University of Reading explained, More himself referred to Utopia as ‘Noland’ or a place that does not exist. More modelled his imaginary island state on Plato’s Republic and described it as having the perfect social, legal and political system, where everyone was equal, where everyone shunned war, where poverty had been completely eradicated, and where all religions were tolerated.
Another well-known thinker who wrote on utopianism was the Dominican, Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639), who was the focus of a presentation by Dr. Peter Forshaw, a lecturer at Birkbeck College, London University. Campanella, who lived a century after More, famously rejected the orthodox philosophy of Aristotle and championed various unorthodox beliefs. For his literary defence of Galileo and the Copernican system, he spent much of his life in gaol courtesy of the Inquisition.
While he was incarcerated that Campanella wrote one of the most important utopian works of the era –– The City of the Sun. The work took the form of a dialogue between a Genoese sailor, who had sailed with Columbus to the New World, and a knight Hospitaller.
In the work, he described his imaginary city as being of a philosophical hue, a communistic republic where all things were governed according to nature; even the city’s concentric walls were related the seven planets of traditional astrology, which as Dr. Forshaw explained, reflected Campanella’s interest in natural magic, common to many intellectuals of the time.
Dr. Guido Giglioni of the Warburg Institute presented a paper on Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, in which he spoke of an ideal state called Bensalem where both the temporal and religious establishments promoted the advancement of learning in all its forms, in an attempt to understand the ‘secret motion of things’.
Professor Tony Lentin, of Clare College, Cambridge, gave a fascinating address on an eighteenth-century utopian vision, Journey to the land of Ophir, by Russian Prince Mikhail Mikhailovich Scherbatov in 1784.
Prince Scherbatov was Imperial Historiographer to Catherine the Great and is widely recognised as one of the most important commentators on her reign. However, his path to political advancement was personally blocked by Catherine as she was aware that he had secretly written critiques of her absolutist rule. Consequently, many scholars now believe that Scherbatov, when writing of his utopian land, may have couched his politically-charged beliefs in a literary narrative, and thereby proffered a subtle blueprint for potential social reforms. Intriguingly, Prince Scherbatov was also a Freemason, and in the 1770s he was a member of the Lodge of Equality as well as a Royal Arch Chapter.
Continuing in this political vein, Pierre Mollier, Director of the Library and Museum of the Grand Orient of France, gave a fascinating paper on several social utopians of the nineteenth-century. Concentrating predominantly on the social theorist, Charles Fourier (1772-1837), Mollier explained that Fourier believed French society should be reorganised into self-sufficient units which would be scientifically designed so as to offer the maximum amount of co-operation and self-fulfilment.
This ‘utopian’ society would radically alter the concepts of marriage, private property and the way people lived. Mollier also pointed out that Fourier’s theories emerged at a time when French Freemasonry was changing, when the lodges were moving away from philanthropy and esotericism, and were beginning to develop an interest in social issues and new religious concepts.
Consequently, many French Freemasons began to adopt Fourier’s theories. In 1836 one lodge in Brest, Les Elus de Sully, even advocated that the Grand Orient of France should change its name to ‘The Disciples of Fourier’, a move no doubt assisted by the fact that Fourier was himself a mason.
But as Professor Wouter Hanegraaff (holder of the Chair of History of Hermetic philosophy and related currents at the University of Amsterdam) pointed out in a paper, ‘Utopias of the Mind’, utopias need not necessarily be understood as ideal societies in a three-dimensional sense. On the contrary, if we look again at the original meaning of utopia, he argued, it is essentially ‘no place’, that is, it does not physically exist.
Instead, such places belong to the realm of the imagination. Such places can and have been visited during altered states of consciousness, which for the sojourner, it may be argued, are just as real. And such places have been known to mystics in all cultures throughout the ages, right down to the practitioners of the so-called ‘new age’ movements of today.
Indeed, perhaps it is to such places that every mason must travel if they want to quarry material for the construction of the true Masonic temple.
From Freemasonry Today, winter 2007/2008
At least in my opinion, those types of views represent more of a Deist worldview than a Catholic one.
Hopefully of interest. And hopefully written without an excessive amount of tinfoil.