Report Of The Anti-Masonic Congress.

REPORT OF THE ANTI-MASONIC CONGRESS .

THE serious conclusions of the Anti-Masonic Congress should nofc be allowed to share the discredit of the unproved allegations on the same subject as fco the credibility of which a controversy is at present raging in the press . The Congress , in arriving at its decisions , put aside the controverted writings alike of " Leo Taxil" and of the Abbe Margiotta , while refraining

from passing any judgment on the enigmatical and disputed personality of Miss Diana Vaughan . Whether that lady have any real existence , whether she is not one , but two individuals , whether , if there be such a person , her conversion be a reality or a sham , and whether her present oecultation be due fco concealment as a precaution against assassination , or to her

abandonment of a part which she was only playing for a purpose , are mysteries which the general body of the Congress have left to be elucidated by a special committee organised for the purpose . Its work , thus disengaged from the investigation of these burning questions , was based entirely on the books and official acts of the Masonic body itself . The report of the

Congress , founded on these authentic documents , of which a small library was provided to assist its deliberations , embodies the conclusions as to the fundamental doctrines of Masonry it has arrived at after their investigation . To the question , " What are the religious doctrines by which Freemasonry has been inspired ? " the reply is thafc they are those of nature-worship ,

the cult practised in ancient times in fche mysteries of the Indians , Persians , Egyptians , Phoenicians , Romans , Greeks , and Druids , while forming in Christian ages the kernel of the . creed professed by the Gnostics , Manichseans , Albigenses , Catarini , and kindred sects , as well as of the Templars , Philosophers of Fire , Alchemists , or Rosicrueians , who , in 24 th June 1717 ,

founded Freemasonry with its actual symbolism , in order to perpetuate their creed . The principle venerated by them is defined by the English Lodge , the parent of all those since founded , as " The ability of nature , the intelligence of the power that exists in nature , wifch its various operations . " But this creed , developed into various blasphemous and impious dogmas ,

is not imparted to all the initiated of the sect , and the Congress had also to consider the question whether " the doctrines professed , at least apparently , by Freemasons , have a general connecting link , and if so , what it is . " To this query the unanimous reply was that the various beliefs publicly professed by them under different names may be summed up as " Monism "

or the " Great All-in-all , " of idealistic Pantheism , and of Materialism under the name of Positive Science , or Positivism . The further propositions were formulated that these doctrines , in the universal symbolical language of Freemasons , are called by them ostensible Masonry for the profane , that they have all a closely-connecting link in the identification of the universe

wifch God , thafc they are all derived from Masonry , the school and seminary of atheism , and thafc fche nexus between them consists in the substitution of fche idea of a generating God of the universe , for the Christian idea of God , the Creator of heaven and earth . . . . This substitution is , moreover , declared fco be indicated in Masonry , by fche application fco the Divinity of the name Architect of the Universe , the word

" architect" implying the pre-existence , or co-existence of the materials of architecture , and of the forces for its manipulation . The aim of Masonry was next defined as " destruction in the moral , intellectual , and physical order . " Its destructive action in the first field consists of the deliberate substitution of evil for good , in the deification of the evil principle , and with it of all the vices , under the name of virtues .

In the intellectual order the destruction of truth is aimed at in the explicit and necessary profession of secrecy and falsehood , wifch all their attendant forms of deceit and perversion . The same tenet is symbolised in fche physical order in the divinisation of death , or universal destruction , by the submission for the Holy Trinity of Christian belief , of the Indian trinity of a

generating , destroying , and regenerating god , represented by the Triangle , proclaimed in the principle attributed to the cosmos , that fche death of one is the" birth of another , and embodied as a factor in human society , in the phrases of" struggle for existence , " " perpetual revolution , " and "indefinite progress . " Although these accusations against Freemasonry as an Anti-Christian

organisation are not new , since they have been the topic of Catholic journalism on the Continent of at least a quarter of a century , they have not , since fche publication of the Encyclical " Humanum Genus , " been promulgated with such authority , and as the result of such serious deliberation . It will , for the future ,

be impossible for Catholics to seek to minimise the evil tendencies of Freemasonry , or to represent the attacks on ifc as inspired by baseless imaginings or pious exaggeration . Masonic records themselves have furnished the materials on which the Congress has based its conclusions , and these are in no degree invalidated by any doubts as to the authenticity of other statements

Report Of The Anti-Masonic Congress.

formulated by its accusers . What has been held to be sufficiently proved by an assemblage of grave and learned laymen and ecclesiastics is quite sufficient to condemn Masonry in the eyes of all well-minded people , as an agglomeration of impious and blasphemous rites , inherited from the oldest and most degraded

worships of fche East . Thafc afc least a strong case for further inquiry has been made out , might well be considered as established even by those well-meaning though deluded Freemasons , who , regarding the Brotherhood as a harmless benevolent society , are at once its dupes and its decoys . That Freemasonry is in all

foreign countries the most active of fche anti-religious forces , and the camp and railing point of all the others , is a fact so obvious as scarcely to require statement . Whether or not it is inspired in this hostility by fche actual practice of demonolatry , in one or other of its forms , is a question which recenb French publications

have brought to the fore-front of sensational literary discussion . Earlier and more sober revelations on the subject , probably resting on a substratum of truth , have been , perhaps , unduly discredited by the fantastic and legendary accretions with which they have been weighted in the writings published under the

pseudonym of " Diana Vaughan . ' That there is in France a sect devoted to the worship of Lucifer , as the champion of rebellious humanity , is , we believe , a well-attested fact , and the propagation of this diabolical creed has been ascribed by M . Taxil and M . Ricoux to an inner ring of the Masonic body called Palladia Masonry .

We reviewed in these columns last week fche work in which Mr . Waite , on behalf of Masonry , traverses and impugns these statements , but without any conclusive refutation of their general drift . He adduces at least no disproof of the facts alleged as to the foundation and organisation of this mystery within mystery ,

the govenor-wheel of the great Masonic machine , whose working would account ; for much of its modern history . The story told , substantially the same in all versions , is that on the taking of Rome in 1870 , Mazzini , in combination with Albert Pike , an American Grand Master , from Charleston , South Carolina ,

founded a Supreme Masonic Rite called fche Order of the Palladium , with a view to the creation of a central governing body through which to obtain control of the Lodges all over the world . With the worship of Lucifer as ifcs creed , and " Baphomet , " the idol worshipped in the temple , as its

" Palladium , a parody of ecclesiastical organisation was instituted by the installation of Pike as Sovereign Pontiff , and the creation of a Supreme Dogmatic Directory , with its seat at Charleston , as a Masonic College of Cardinals . In addition to the Sovereign Executive Directory , domiciled in Rome , of which

Mazzini was the first chief , there is an international Directory of seven members which sits at Berlin , while four Grand Central Directories have their seats in Naples , Calcutta , Washington , and Montevideo . The body is financed by a rate of 1 per cent ., levied on the contributions of all Freemasons throughout the

world , and minor Palladia Lodges exist in various places . Signor Lemmi was not only Mazzini ' s successor as political chief , but succeeded by bribery and intrigue in securing his election as Sovereign Pontiff at a conventicle held in Rome in 1893 . A schism has , however , recently occurred in the ranks of the sect ,

on the question whether their divinity should be invoked as Lucifer or Satan , and the Palladists have formed themselves into a separate body with their head-quarters in London , a secret temple in Oxford Street . The existence of some such sect as thafc here described is not , we believe , open to question , as the

doings of some of its votaries have been the subject of legal investigation , and Mr . Waite ' s volume is directed only to the refutation of its connection wifch Masonry . The Scotch verdict of " Nofc proven " is , however , the most favourable thafc can be registered on his review of fche situation , and the benefit of the

doubt the utmost grace that can be claimed on behalf of fche accused . Meantime the discussion of fche subject in journals and periodicals (" The Contemporary Review" for October having been the last to enter the lists with a contribution to it ) has given it a degree of publicity that seems to call for investigation on fche part of the more respectable Freemasons themselves . On

them lies the onus ol clearing the society to which they belong of the foulest of charges , and of dissociating themselves from the infamy attaching to fchem . To let judgment go by default where the accusations made have attained such clamorous notoriety is equivalent to pleading guilty to them before the tribunal of public opinion . — "Tablet . "

The nature of the proceedings at the Anti-Masonic Congress at Trent suggests a contrast between the policy pursued at Catholic assemblages of this kind and that usually adopted at similar Protestant gatherings . As a rule , Protestant speakers largely devote their efforts to reviling Catholics . Afc Trent , as at other Catholic Congresses , the addresses dealt wholly with principles . Nay , the delegates present at Trent took care to insist