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MASONS AND JESUITS
Our Masonic readers, of whom very respectable numbers are scattered throughout India, ought to be on the lookout for recent publications against their Fraternity. We find quite an interesting little libel upon their organization quietly running through the columns of the Roman Catholic Tablet in its November issue of 1881. The two Nestors of Patriotism, Giuseppe Mazzini and Garibaldi come in for a very fair share of venomous abuse in the said Epopée headed— “Rome as a Capital of Italy”; but fortunately they have to largely share their honours in the ecclesiastical vilification with the “Royal Sardinian usurpers.”
A few extracts from the short slander-peppered chapters, published in the columns of the Tablet and offered to us as 56 an historical record, may prove of interest to some of our Hindu readers. They are well calculated to enhance the importance of that respectable and quiet, yet withal mysterious-looking building to be met with in almost every town of India, the object of a superstitious awe to the unsophisticated coolie, who designates it as a “Jadukhana” (sorcery-house), while the guidebook introduces it to the traveller as a Masonic Lodge. How little does the well-meaning native, who, dying for the honour of admission into the craft, is ready to be laying out any amount of money yearly and monthly, if he can but get himself recognized as one more Masonic cipher in the numberless Chapters, Senates and Councils—suspect the true amount of iniquity fathered upon his Grand Masters and Fellow-apprentices! Well may, indeed, the uninitiated Babu, who so readily swallows the tales spread about the “Bara Sahibs” of Masonry, feel an extra thrill of horror creeping down his back, while reading the accusations fulminated against the “Illustrious” Brethren by their irreconcilable enemy—the Church of Rome. The widespread legend about the skeleton, stealthily quitting during Masonic meetings his hiding place—a secret tomb under the tessellated floor of the Jadukhana—and creeping from under the banquet table to appear in his ominously cluttering bones, and drink the health of the Grand Master—will receive an additional colour of verisimilitude, when it compares notes with these additional accusations. Indeed, the charges brought out in the Tablet against the “Freemason-poet” and “his hymn to SATAN,” published, as alleged in the “Bolletino of the Grand Orient of Italy,” is worthy of perusal. In this pre-eminently interesting exposé we are told, to begin with, that the unity of Italy “for which torrents of blood were shed, was but a pretext to destroy the Papacy, and especially Christian—Catholic Rome.” This design originated with the “Anti-Christian Sects,” (?) who thus promoted “the ambition of one particular State.”
It was a necessity for the sects to strive to eradicate certain principles out of Italy, and especially the Papacy. They needed Rome as a capital to destroy Catholic Rome. The State needed accomplices in order to carry out her old ambition of eating up the Italian artichoke leaf by 57 leaf. And so it happened, one fair day, that the sects offered a hand to the State to help her to eat up the artichoke. And the State ate it up, promising in return to lead the sects to Rome.
The above is but an entrée en matière, indispensable to throw sufficient light upon other and far darker passages that will follow. No need of reminding the reader that our attention was not turned to them on account of their political flavour. We are thinking more of the priest than of the politician. For—adds the writer:—
This is no parable. It is a true story, and not only true but undeniably proved by confessions.
During the first centuries of Christianity, a law was enacted—and we do not know it was ever abrogated—under which a priest who divulges the secrets of the confessional, even in a case of the greatest crime—is sentenced to have his tongue cut out. Since then, the apostles seem to have grown in wisdom; Christian religion has become the handmaid and the secret agent of worldly ambition, its mysteries being made subservient to political espionage. Such a public confession in print is really valuable, inasmuch as it contains a useful warning to those of our members who, having remained good Christians, though only nominal Roman Catholics, may have a mind of going some day to confession. It is unnecessary to remind the reader that by “Anti-Christian sects” the Tablet writer means the Freemasons. Thus—
Certain things which have been written lately by the more imprudent of those Sectarians in the praises which they have lavished on their Pietro Cossa, . . . the poet of this new Rome who ascribes every new glory to MARTIN LUTHER . . . the German foreigner and an apostate friar, . . . have revealed a good deal more than . . . they intended, of the real object they had in view in snatching Rome from the Pope . . . in ruining the Papacy and restoring Pagan Rome.
One of the principal writers “of these sects”— “JULIUS,” is quoted, as he clearly proved the true object by saying:—
Rome, ancient Rome, civil and Pagan, Rome rises from the mortal lethargy in which Sacerdotalism had buried her. . . . Let us tear from the breast of civil Rome, Sacerdotal Rome. . . . GIUSEPPE MAZZINI . . . said openly: “A revolution may bring about the era of a new faith, a new free Church . . . for all this we must have Rome in our hands.” And the “Bolletino” of the Great Orient of Italian Freemasonry, in its very 58 first number writes—”as long as Italy permits the Papacy to continue . . . the world will groan under an intolerable yoke.” And still more clearly, later on, it says:— “The world at this moment begins to breathe, seeing Italy prepared to drive away the Roman Pontificate. . . . Foreign countries recognize the right of the Italians to exist as a nation now that they have confided to them the highest mission, i.e., that of freeing them from the yoke of Catholic Rome.”
Many good Christians of whom we know—and no friends of Freemasonry, nor of sectarian Protestantism either—may nourish, we suspect, a feeling of gratitude to the Masons, could they but seriously believe that the Italian craft is doing even so much toward the liberation of the world from the tyrannical, narrow-minded SACERDOTALISM. Moved by the sincerest philanthropic feelings, we fervently hope that the above will prove less of a calumny than the construction put in the said article upon one of the most honest, and certainly the most patriotic, of Italian popular poets, whose name closes the following paragraph:—
The work of the sects (Anti-Christian Masons) and the work of the propagators of Italian unity are one; and in vain do they try to deny this union when the names of their chiefs, their Ministers, their deputies, their senators, and the prefects who govern Italy, are all to be found in the registers of the sects, which anyone may see who has in his hand the Freemason Almanack. Their watchword is, to destroy the Catholic Church and Catholic Rome. This is the confession of the Journal of the Great Orient: é il fine che la Massoneria si propone. [This is the end which Freemasonry proposes to itself] and for which it has laboured “for centuries.” It was to carry out this intention that it occurred to the Freemasons to deprive the Pope of Rome; and Rome was, in consequence, torn from the Pope. And the Freemason poet in his hymn to SATAN, which was published in this same “Bolletino” of the Great Orient of Italy, writes:—
“Tu spiri, O Satana, |
59 Ending the poem with this triumphant Masonic vow:—
“Salute, O Satana! |
“War to the God of Catholics and to the Pope as Vicar of Jesus Christ, that war to promote which the Masonic journal has an apposite rubric, this is the true end and aim of Rome, Capital of Italy.”
Freemasonry has declared war on the Papacy; has profited by the ambitions, the passion, the vices of all parties, and made use of the arm of a Catholic State to complete its preparations, by making Rome the capital of the anti-Papal movement. In her official bulletin it is said, without any attempt at concealment, by a writer named STEFANO DI RORAI:—
“Freemasonry will have the glory, of subduing the terrible Hydra of the Papacy, planting on its ruins the secular standard, verita, amore.” (Truth and Love.) FERARI had already said: “We cannot advance one step without striking down the Cross.”
SBARBARO, in his book on Liberty, confessed: “All Liberals are agreed that we never shall have national liberty till we have freed consciences from the slavery of Rome . . . which penetrates into families, schools, and all social life.” And elsewhere he said: “We are in the midst of a serious struggle, not only of social interests, but of religious principles, and he must be blind who does not perceive it.” Freemasonry, as SBARBARO has over and over again repeated, and as all its leaders have declared, “must take the place of the Church.” And for this reason alone she has stolen Rome from the Popes to make it her proper centre, under the plea of making her the capital of Italy. This was the real reason for the choice of Rome as a capital; which was not necessary or desirable, either historically or politically; neither for military nor for national reasons; and still less for the advantage of the Italian people.
But this end, this real scope of the whole movement, “It is premature to mention,” wrote GIUSEPPE MAZZINI, and must be only preached to a redeemed people.” For, before this “redemption” of Italy, it was necessary to blind their eyes and ears with big words about nationality, and liberty, and the necessity of Rome for United Italy. Today Freemasonry, thinking it has sufficiently “redeemed” the unhappy Italian people, throws off the mask and cries without reserve what ALBERTO MARIO had said a short time before the coming of Italy to Rome:
“To disarm the Church is not to kill her. |
60 We wonder whether the innocent Parsi and the “mild” Hindu of the native “Jadukhanas” have ever given one single thought to the above. Do they ever have their dreams disturbed by the uncomfortable thought that, notwithstanding their enforced rupture with the “Grand Orient” whose chapters wickedly refuse—do what their Brethren of the “Orthodox” Craft masonry may—to bow to the “Jehovah of the Priests,” but will have their “Principe Créateur”— that they, too, are part and parcel with that depraved Body known as the “Grand Orient of France and Italy”—that so unblushingly confesses to an inspiration “from Satan”?
Footnotes