Papal Condemnations of Freemasonry

Pope Pius VII 1800-1823

Pope Pius VII 1800-1823

Let us now enter into the 19th century. The wars of the French Revolution and of the Empire spread and favored the creation of Masonic lodges (mostly Military lodges) and the rapid European expansion of Masonic subversive ideas.

Pope Pius VII became one of its glorious victims. It was therefore, in full knowledge of the subject, that on September, 1821, in his Encyclical "Ecclesiam a Jesu-Cristo the Pope applied to the Carbonari the following text: "They come under the guise of sheep although they are, in truth, none but ravening wolves." Thus, the Pope reiterated against the Freemasons the condemnations pronounced by Clement XII and Benedict XIV because they propagandize "religious indifference which is, of all, the most pernicious"; They also grant to everyone full liberty to inaugurate for himself his own religion according to his ideas and inclinations; to also profane and sully Our Savior's Passion in some of their odious ceremonies; to hold in contempt the Sacraments of the Church to which in a horrible sacrilegious manner they substitute sacraments of their own invention and they treat with derision the Mysteries of the Catholic Religion. Lastly, urged by a particular hatred toward the Apostolic See, because of its supremacy, Freemasons form conspiracies of the darkest and most sinister kind, in order to overthrow it.

To what does Pope Pius VII refer when he makes use of the words "they hold in contempt the Sacraments of the Church"; if not to the Masonic 180 degree of the Rose Croix, which is an odious parody of the Sacrament of the Eucharist? What is it that the Pontiff stigmatises when he alludes to the substitution of Masonic sacraments to those of the Church and its ensuing horrible sacrileges if not to the "black mass" and the theft of consecrated hosts which Masons of the highest grades carry on their person as "Sacred Deposit" during the ceremony which precedes the orgy in the course of which they will profane It in the lowest, voluptuous ignominy?

Why should we thus administer such blows to this "Anti Papism"? It is because it is the unbroken chain of Freemasonry and because the Pope is, on earth, the representative of Jesus Christ whose Cross is trampled upon by Masons, and because in the course of their rites, at the 30 initiation grade, they throw upside down the Pope's tiara and figuratively pierce his heart. Such things occur at the initiation of the degree of Knight Kadosh. Pope Pius VII was well informed.