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The Catholic Freemason


It's a strange and odd thing to be both a Roman Catholic and a Freemason. You become a Roman Catholic through no choice of your own ( it largely depends not on your family but on the country you grow up in) but you become a Freemason through choice. Both things should not be mutually exclusive and Freemasonry isn't bothered if their members are Catholic or Protestant or followers of other religious faiths. Sadly, the RCC does have an axe to grind with Freemasonry 
(even though Freemasonry is not a religion nor a substitute for religion). 
Of course for many or all Catholics, being a Freemason already disqualifies me as a Roman Catholic. I really don't care too much for that. One cannot escape from God 
( nor should) and God was fed to me thorough Rome. 

The Vatican has ratified it's position on Freemasonry:

"Therefore the Church's negative judgment in regard to Masonic association remains unchanged since their principles have always been considered irreconcilable with the doctrine of the Church and therefore membership in them remains forbidden. The faithful who enrol in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion."


This means that a Catholic who is also a member of a Masonic Obedience should not partake from the Eucharist, the most important of all Sacraments. In practice this isn't enforced ( it can't be and it's left to everyone's conscience). The first papal bull against Freemasonry was motivated purely by political reasons:  In eminenti apostolatus specula is a papal bull issued by Pope Clement XII on 28 April 1738, banning Catholics from becoming Freemasons. It arose from Jacobite-Hanoverian rivalry on the continent. Theologically, this bull was justified through fundamentalism and intolerance: Catholics should not be conducting secretive ceremonies with members of other religions. 

Later prohibitions were based on misinterpretations caused by frauds like the Leo Taxil hoax and as of late, the main accusation made by the Catholic church against Freemasonry is that Freemasonry promotes indifferentism ( this is to say, that it respects all religions equally) and Deism ( God created the world but remains aloof and disconnected from his creation). 

But of course, Freemasonry and Catholicism are merely the the tips of the iceberg. What's really concealed behind them are two world views: the old regime versus modernity and postmodernity; scholasticism versus the age of reason.

Like a living and breathing piece of Hegelian dialectics, I feel that I reconcile both paradigms in my own being. 

There is treasure trove of spiritual practices contained within  Roman Catholicism. But there is also a wealth of wisdom to be found in Freemasonry too. 

As Bataille rightly said, reality is nothing more than a violent contradiction.
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