Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli

In almost every town in Italy, there is a street named “Via XX Set­tembre” (September 20th Street). It celebrates the capture of Rome on Sept. 20, 1870. This event brought an end to the Papal States and unified Italy as one country. Prior to that date, the Pope was not merely the spiritual leader of the Catholic Church, but the temporal ruler of several states within Italy.

After the Byzantine Empire under emperor Justinian I had devastated Italy’s political and economic structures in the 6th century, it fell to the Pope to establish order in the areas around Rome. This was the birth of the Papal States. At the height of his temporal rule, the Pope’s political power covered most of the modern Italian regions of Lazio, Le Marche, Umbria, Romagna, and Emilia. When the 13,157 men of the Papal States were depleted by some 50,000 Italians on September 20, 1870, the Papal States — against the protest of Blessed Pope Pius IX — became part of Italy under King Victor Emmanuel II.

Already, during those tense days of the unification of Italy (the Risorgimento), the Church had to face head on the thorny issue of church-state relations. On April 20, 1884, Pope Leo XIII issued the papal encyclical Humanum Genus. He spoke out against the exclusion of the Church from participation in public affairs. He recognized the subtle erosion of the Church’s place as an institution in society. Pope Leo XIII traced the growing hostility to the Church’s participation in society to Freemasonry.

Some historians placed the origins of Freemasonry with the formation of the first Masonic Grand Lodge on June 4, 1717 at the Goose & Gridiron Ale-House in London. In the early days, many Catholics joined this men’s club. However, the Church soon began to issue warnings to Catholics about the dangers of Freemasonry. From Clement XII’s papal Encyclical “In Eminenti” issued on April 28, 1738, Pope after Pope have spoken out again this movement, even up to our day. On his July 28, 2013 flight from Rio to Rome, Pope Francis spoke of the detrimental influence of a Freemason lobby. Modern Popes have rightly understood the logical consequences that flow from an acceptance of Freemasonry.

The fundamental principles of Free­masonry stand in opposition to the Catholic faith. Whether or not the original promoters of this movement began with the intention of seeking an end to the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants, their basic philosophy advances the belief that all religions and even no religion are of equal worth. “They deny that anything has been taught by God; they allow no dogma of religion or truth which cannot be understood by the human intelligence…” (Humanum Genus, 12). The Church, founded by Jesus himself as the guardian of the truth he taught, can never accept such religious indifferentism.

Freemasonry demands that its members place their loyalty to it before their loyalty to the Church. Pope Leo XIII warned against the Masonic set purpose of excluding the Church from hospitals, schools, universities and public charities. They were working, he said, to have the state exercise total control over all marriages by reducing marriage to the level of a commercial contract, made and revoked at will. They promoted divorce and abortion. They further advocated that youth must never be taught religion as a fixed truth (Humanum Genus, 21)

The 19th century warnings of Pope Leo XIII read like a most accurate description of the situation of contemporary politics. It seems as if those who are stridently opposed to the Church’s teaching on faith, marriage, education of young people and the sanctity of all life have been following a Masonic guidebook for establishing a secularistic culture. Those who today cast their grains of incense on the altar of political correctness, eschewing the basic tenets of the faith, are merely the latest soldiers in the campaign to deconstruct the Christian faith.

In each generation, believers need to know and understand the teachings of the faith and then embrace them and put them into practice in their private and public lives. This alone will establish a culture where “justice [is] joined to clemency, equity to authority, and moderation to lawgiving; [so] that no one’s right [is] violated; …order and public tranquility … maintained and … the poverty of those are in need … relieved by public and private charity” (Humanum Genus, 29).