(No. V.)—Priestly Opposition To Freemasonry In Prance.

( No . V . )—PRIESTLY OPPOSITION TO FREEMASONRY IN PRANCE .

It must be admitted that many of our brethren when called upon to occupy exalted positions have been anything but faithful to the principles of the Craft . Eor example of this we may refer to Bro . Napoleon III . and Bro . Pius the Ninth . The

former has virtually assumed the command of the Order in Prance , and the latter has exerted the whole power of his priesthood against us . The present Emperor of the French and the present Pontiff were , we believe , in their youthful days

not only Freemasons but also members of the revolutionaiy secret society of the Carbonarists , and we fear that in later years their recollection of the early events of their lives has faded , and possibly led them to confuse the working of two

essentially distinct and indeed totally opposite associations . However this may be , the Roman Catholic Church is the bitter enemy of our brotherhood in all parts of the world . In Spain , whose virtuous Queen recently received the Golden

Rose , or highest mark of Papal favour , the Order has been utterly suppressed . However desirous we may be to view the Roman Catholic religion favourably , it is not at all calculated to increase our feelings of respect for the Pope to see him on

the one hand hurling thunderbolts against Freemasonry , which in England at any rate is one of the noblest and most beneficent institutions that has ever existed , while on the other hand he is bestowing the highest marks of approval on the

most notoriously wicked woman of the present age . It is conduct like this which adds renewed strength and pungency to the trenchant language of the late Walter Savage Landor , who wittily observed that , "If the Popes are the servants of

God , it must be confessed that God has been very unlucky in the choice of his household . " In Austria , Freemasonry is only likely to spring into life under the constitutional liberty which has made the Concordat a dead letter ; and in Prance ,

the " eldest son of the Church , " our Order is persecuted in the most violent manner . In England even , we are not much better , as every year hundreds of Catholics are prevented joining our ranks by the threats of the priests . Within the last year

or two , in one of the provinces of the Grand Lodge of England , a man of gentlemanly birth and education , who had been elected W . M . of one of our lodges was compelled to tear up his Grand Lodge Certificate and publicly to do penance in a

manner which to persons of other religious creeds appeared utterly degrading and suitable only to the superstition of the Middle Ages . If such an exhibition of clerical tyranny can actually take place among us , it may easily be believed

that the priesthood go to still greater lengths in France . A French Mason is not only regarded as worse than a heretic whilst living , but at his death , unless he will recant , he is refused the last offices of the Church , and dies under the ban of

excommunication . These proscriptions are no light matter in a Catholic country , although to the majority of Englishmen who are wont to care very little about what ultra-sacerdotalism may do or say , they may appear so . Moreover , any person who

may let a house for the carrying on of a Masonic lodge is visited by the priests and threatened with similar pains and penalties if the Masons are not at once turned out . People who are outside the Catholic Church generally believe that the Roman

priesthood are profoundly subtle , and ready to be " all things to all men " in order to extend their Church . In this there may be some degree of

truth ; but to our minds the action of the Church is often needlessly foolish , and calculated to excite animosity where it vrould not otherwise exist . For ourselves , constant association with liberal and rightminded Catholics had given us a very high

opinion of the piety , benevolence , and public spirit of members of the Roman Church , and when we come right in front of the organised opposition of the priesthood to Freemasonry , we received a rude shock to our charitable feelings .

A letter appeared in the Freemasons' Magazine recently from a Catholic , which , referring to the vagaries of a certain Father Suffield , who had constituted himself the great iconoclast of

Freemasonry , endeavoured to show that it was- only the bigoted Catholics that , like bigoted Protestants , were opposed to our Order . This is , however , a mistake , which would probably have been brought home by the priesthood to the mind

of the writer of that letter if he had dared to publish his name . A man cannot be a good Catholic in the sense of being an acknowledged member of the Roman Church , and at the same time be a Freemason—unless he has a

special dispensation from Rome ,, which can only be obtained with great difficulty , and is never granted except to persons of very great influence . On the other hand there may be Protestants who ignorantly condemn Freemasonry , but there is no