The Freemasons are an elusive group when it comes to the modern field of strange and mysterious religious factions. If one could even call them that, the Freemasons are a hierarchical secret society whose members span many Founding Fathers, succeeding presidents and government officials in both the United States and England, many celebrities like Harry Houdini, Duke Ellington, and other public figures.
The status it has with elite members of English (and thereby American) culture has led most people to know little about them, and combined with their hard-to-categorize beliefs and practices, makes them thoroughly difficult to explain.
The origin of the Freemasons, as the name implies, comes from the English stone masons who were in charge of quarries and the distribution and use of large quantities of stone. Out of these grew guilds of Masons which functioned partly as social clubs and partly as unions in these formative days. Eventually the Masons as they have come to be known as almost entirely separated from their stonemason roots to being entirely a social club with a quasi-religious aspect.
The Masonic claim of theological belief is that they are on paper Christian in belief, and for a long time only allowed Christians to join their lodges (the name of Masonic meeting houses). All Masons upon joining would receive and embroidered Bible, and Masons even claim to affirm the Trinity. This has kind of taken a turn in that now non-Christians may join, and although some Masons will still argue that they are Christian, most proclaim some form of Theism or Deism.
All this being said, the teachings of the practices and attitudes of Freemasonry go against many fundamentally held Catholic beliefs. This is where it becomes difficult as Masons don’t have doctrines per se, but they do have rituals which in many ways are based on and perversions of the Catholic Mass.
Again, although not explicit, Masonry has many softly held neo-gnostic beliefs adjacent to pantheism, universalism, naturalism, the occult, and basically deny the existence of divine revelation and the existence of an objective truth. For these and other reasons, it didn’t take long after the Masons had formed and founded for Pope Clement XII in his 1738 Papal Bull In eminenti apostolatus which forbade any Catholic to become a member.
This was restated and reaffirmed by seven subsequent popes: Benedict XIV, Pius VII, Leo XII, Pius VIII, Gregory XVI, and Pius IX who wrote about it six times. This culminated in the most ardent critic of Freemasonry, Leo XIII whose famous Bull Humanum Genus promulgated in 1884 thoroughly forbade any Catholic from joining the Masons and joining was an action that incurred a Latæ Sententia or automatic excommunication in Canon Law and was a sin reserved to the Apostolic See. This means that to grant absolution for joining, a priest would have to write to the Vatican for approval.
Much of the large amounts of Church writing on this topic was because there have been many Catholics who were also members of Lodges, and this even became an internal hierarchical problem as there have long been rumors of certain bishops, cardinals, and priests who were allegedly affiliated; although not much is known or able to be proven.
Knowing all this, it certainly reminds us Catholics how serious many things concerning Church governance are, however, unless one is formerly involved with the Masons or has relatives who were, they really need not think too much about it. The Masons, their practices, and beliefs remain mysterious and strange.
Born and Raised to Jewish parents in New York City, Kai Breskin is a recent convert to the Catholic Faith. A member of the Boston College class of 2026, he is studying Political Science, Philosophy, and History. His intellectual passions include Christian theology, history, and liturgical study. His hobbies include sailing, playing the piano, and singing, with a specific focus in Gregorian Chant.
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