<div dir="ltr"><div><h1 class="gmail-article-title">The saint who founded a movement in response to Freemasonry</h1>
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<div class="gmail-article-author">by <strong><a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/author/francis-phillips/" title="Posts by Francis Phillips" rel="author">Francis Phillips</a></strong></div>
<div class="gmail-article-date">posted <time datetime="2017-11-17 11:56:54">Friday, 17 Nov 2017</time></div><div class="gmail-article-date"><time datetime="2017-11-17 11:56:54"><a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2017/11/17/the-saint-who-founded-a-movement-in-response-to-freemasonry/">http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2017/11/17/the-saint-who-founded-a-movement-in-response-to-freemasonry/</a><br></time></div>
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<div class="gmail-article-featured"><img src="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/content/uploads/2017/11/Kolbe-szombathely-800x500.jpg" class="gmail-featured-image gmail-wp-post-image" alt="" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="180" height="112"> <div class="gmail-featured-caption">
St Maximilian Kolbe witnessed celebrations of the 200th anniversary of Freemasonry </div>
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<p class="gmail-article-standfirst"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"><b>St Maximilian Kolbe formed the Knights of the Immaculate after</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>seeing</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>masonic celebrations</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>in Rome</b></span></p>
<p>Following on from my blog on the revised CTS <a href="http://www.ctsbooks.org/infertility-and-fertility-treatment/">booklet on fertility and infertility</a> by Dr Pia Matthews (in the CTS Explanations series), I have been<span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"><b> reading <a href="http://www.ctsbooks.org/freemasonry-and-the-christian-faith/">Freemasonry and the Christian Faith</a>
by Fr Ashley Beck, first published in 2005 and revised this year.</b></span> This
has been prompted by a friend emailing me a couple of weeks ago to tell
me she had discovered an out of print book <span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"><b>detailing</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>all the ways that
Freemasons have been secretly and maliciously orchestrating world
events,</b><b> from the French Revolution to the overthrow</b></span><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b> of the late Shah of
Persia.</b></span></p>
<p>I am suspicious of conspiracy theories, partly because I recognise
how easily they can take hold of the imagination with their vast,
compelling fictions, and partly because they fly in the face of
salvation history. I have occasionally come across devout Catholics who
speak sotto voce about masonic machinations and have privately concluded
that, in this area at least, they are slightly unhinged. </p>
<p>This does not mean that I dismiss the diabolical and the way<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b> it tries
to influence <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)">humans</span> in an underhand way.</b><b> Evil has been part of <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)">the
human story <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">from the very</span> beginning</span>. </b></span><span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"><b>The good news is that Christ has
conquered<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"> death</span> and, as the children of Fatima showed so beautifully in
their innocent trustfulness of Our Lady of Fatima’s directives, reciting
the rosary daily as she appealed is always the surest way to defeat the
Church’s <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">enemies</span>.</b></span></p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"><b>Fr Beck’s booklet shows conclusively</b></span> that<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b> being a Freemason is
completely incompatible with</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"><b>being a Christian</b></span>. Why Catholics (and to a
greater extent An<span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><span style=""></span></span>glicans) should ever have been tempted to join them is a
mystery to me.<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b> <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)">Although</span> the English branch of masonry, known as the
Grand Lodge, <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)">believes in “the Great Architect of the Universe”</span>, this is
simply a form of Deism </b><b>– and a heresy<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">.</span></b><b> There is no <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">Trinity</span>, no <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">Christ </span>
(and therefore no <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">Incarnation and Redemption</span>) </b></span>and, to return to Our<span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><span style=""></span></span> Lady
of Fatima, <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>no<span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"> love or reverence for the Mother of God</span>.</b></span></p>
<p>I was very interested to learn from Fr Beck that <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"><b>St Maximilian Kolbe
was so horrified</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>by the public celebrations of the 200th anniversary of
the start of modern speculative Freemasonry in 1717 that <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">he had
witnessed </span>on the streets of Rome <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">as a seminarian there</span> in 1917<span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">,</span></b></span><span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"><b> that it
led him to establish the Knights of the Immaculate – reminding Catholics
yet again that so much of what is lovely and hopeful in the world comes
to us from Christ through His Mother.</b></span></p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"><b>A further footnote from Fr Beck refers to</b></span> “<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>the controversy about the
omission of<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"> </span></b><b>any</b></span><span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"><b> reference to God or the Christian faith</b></span> i<span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>n the draft
Constitutional Treaty of the European Union agreed in 2004</b></span>, <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>about which </b></span>
<span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"><b>the Catholic Church made strong representations:</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>the convenor of the
convention which drafted<span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"> it,</span> <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)">former French President</span> Valéry Giscard
d’Estaing, was a mason.”</b></span></p>
<p>Fr Beck also points out that <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>masonry, unlike </b></span><span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"><b>Christianity</b></span>,<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b> is
patronising to</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>women</b></span>. <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>When a man is initiated into “the Craft”, he has
to remove <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">his wedding ring if he has one</span> – and <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)">women</span> cannot be masons. </b></span>
But then, uniforms, codes, arcane knowledge, strange handshakes and
secular hierarchies are more characteristic of men than of women. </p>
</div><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Fr Beck quotes lines from Mozart’s The Magic Flute <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">that are
derogatory towards women.</span> Much ink has been spilt on the subject of this
opera and freemasonry. My own view is that Mozart was about as much
interested in Freemasonry as Shakespeare was interested in paganism when
he wrote his Roman plays</span>.</div><div id="DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2"><br> <table style="border-top:1px solid #d3d4de">
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