Papal Condemnations of Freemasonry

Pope Clement XIII 1758-1769

Pope Clement XIII 1758-1769

I wish to add that during the 18th century Pope Clement XIII condemned highly placed Masons in an ordinance of January, 1759, against the work of Helvetius and this Pope published on Sept. 3rd, 1759, his constitution "Ut Primum" directed against the "Encyclopedie" of Diderot and d'Alembert .

Finally, in his Encyclical of November 25th, 1766, "Christianae Republicae Salus," Pope Clement XIII denounced the peril incurred by Church and State through the published works of so-called philosophers. It meant that all Voltairian and Masonic works were being anathemized in the following terms:

"The enemy of all Good," said the Pope, "has sown the evil seed in the field of the Lord and the evil grain has grown rapidly, to such an extent, that it threatens to destroy the harvest. It is time to cut it down."

"In our days nothing is free from the attacks of those who are impious. God Himself becomes the object of their insolent audacity, they represent Him as a being who is mute, inert, devoid of a sense of providence or justice; they lower Him down to the level of animals. As far as they are concerned, matter is all or at least dominates everything. Even those among them who are opposed to such gross errors, but too frequently in our days, are not afraid, in their pride, to scrutinize our mysteries and to submit everything to nothing but their own reasoning power."

Clement XIII exposes all the sores of Masonry which at the time of the French Revolution had reached the state of gangrene, such as Materialism, Nationalism, Deism and even Atheism which is most imperfectly veiled by the "Grand Architect of the Universe," a notion which, after all, is only the spontaneous evolution of the universal religion promised in the "Constitutions" of Anderson.

In a last but anxious appeal the Pope entreats all the Bishops in the Catholic world to link their efforts with his own and to beseech all Christian Princes to take in hand the defense of the Sorrowing Church, "Gementis Ecclesiae Causam Exposcite." Listen attentively, 23 years before 1789 (year of the French Revolution) the Church was in tears, due to the threats held out by Freemasonry; who can vouch for the assumption that 23 years remain to us before the Judeo-Masonry of the 20th century will add to the tears being shed by the Church -- blood tears similar to those shed during 1793? But this time it will not be in France only, but throughout the whole world. Is this not the time to speak again of the Sorrowing Church?