The Catholic Church and Secret Societies

Lodge after lodge promised its candidates that nothing inside would interfere with their religion. Fr. Peter Rosen, twenty years a priest, decided to check. He gathered the rituals and manuals the lodges printed for themselves and copied out the pages that matter, so you can see what the Odd-Fellows, Knights of Pythias, Modern Woodmen, Red Men, Elks and more than a dozen other societies said and did in the lodge room.

A blindfolded candidate kneels at an open coffin with a skeleton in it to swear the Pythian oath. The Woodmen hand a man a ladle of “melted lead” and tell him a brave fellow would put his fingers in, then bring out a branding iron painted to look red-hot. The Odd-Fellows’ chaplain opens with prayer, and the third degree puts the candidate in a white robe and stole. Albert Pike explains why the Bible on a Masonic altar is furniture. Rosen asks the obvious question: if a lodge is only an insurance plan with a handshake, what is all this for?

He is fair to the members. Nine out of ten, he reckons, have no idea what the ceremonies mean, and thousands joined for the insurance. His quarrel is with the ceremonies. Part Two gives the Church’s side without paraphrase: Pope Leo’s Humanum Genus entire, the American bishops’ pastoral of 1884, the Roman decision of 1894 against the Odd-Fellows and Knights of Pythias, and the four conditions under which a member might keep his insurance by appeal to the Apostolic Delegate, Cardinal Martinelli, who gave the book his approbation. Read it for the history, or because someone has just asked you to join.