Part 5: Why Can't Christians Pray in Lodge?

Part 5: Difficult Questions About Freemasonry by Roger Firestone

"Why Can't Christians Pray in Lodge?

Of course Christians can pray in Lodge! What they may not do is offer a specifically Christian prayer as Lodge prayer, any more than a Jew or Muslim may offer a prayer specific to his religion.

The reason for this is that it is the custom of Masonry to require all to participate in and assent to Lodge prayer. How can it be proper for a Christian to require non-Christians to assent to a prayer peculiar to his own religious belief? No Christian would assent to a prayer offered by a Jew or Muslim which essentially denied the doctrine of the Trinity. Because a Lodge acts in unison, prayers offered in Lodge must be of a nature that will be agreed to by all present.
To be sure, some Christians believe that only prayers given in a particularly Christian form are truly prayers. These people cannot become Freemasons because they do not subscribe to the principles of religious toleration required of Masons. But most Christians do not hold these exclusive beliefs and have no objections to the form of prayer offered in the Masonic Lodge.

Is Freemasonry anti-Catholic?

No. Masonry has no objection to the admission of a Catholic to the Masonic fraternity. Whether the Roman Catholic Church objects to a Catholic becoming a Freemason is their business, not ours. Masonry would not counsel anyone to do something opposed by his religion. The present position of the Church regarding Freemasonry is not altogether clear; some sources indicate that the Vatican remains opposed to any form of Freemasonry, others say that only those organizations which "plot against the Church" (which Masonry does not) are proscribed, and others see no problem. This is a matter for any individual Catholic who might be interested in joining the Masons and his spiritual advisor.

There is material in some of the degrees of the appendant bodies of Freemasonry which might be interpreted as anti-Catholic, particularly with reference to the history of the Knights Templar and the death of Jacques DeMolay. But those events occurred nearly 700 years ago! The Church of today is not the Church of the 14th century. The Church itself has recognized that leaders of those times made errors of various sorts; one need only look to the 20th century canonization of Joan of Arc, burned in the 15th century as a heretic, or the rehabilitation of Galileo, forced in the 17th century to recant his scientific studies, to recognize this.

The degrees of Masonry make no mention of the Church in any other than remote historical context. Freemasonry is the enemy of tyranny and despotism, not of any particular religion or nationality. If the Church were to fall into the hands of the heartless and rapacious, as it did in earlier times (the days of the Borgias and the Medicis, not to mention Torquemada), it would be as much the duty of every Catholic to denounce such behaviour as it would be for Freemasons--and modern-day Martin Luthers."