The Cross and the Compass: Why Catholicism and Freemasonry Cannot Coexist by Jeff Callaway

The Cross and the Compass: Why Catholicism and Freemasonry Cannot Coexist

By Jeff Callaway

Texas Outlaw Poet

During the vetting process before I could be confirmed into the one true Church of Jesus Christ, Father Fenton at Mary Queen of Heaven Catholic Church in Malakoff, Texas, sat me down and looked me dead in the eye. He asked me point blank: Are you a Freemason? Have you ever been? Does anyone in your family belong to the Lodge? What about your ancestors, your grandfather, great-grandfather, going back through your bloodline?

At first, I thought maybe he was just being thorough, doing his priestly due diligence. But as he pressed deeper, asking about uncles, cousins, anyone connected to my family tree who might have taken those cursed oaths in some dimly lit Lodge room, I realized this was no routine question. This was spiritual triage. Father Fenton was hunting for open doors to the demonic, checking for spiritual landmines that could blow up my faith before it even had a chance to take root. Long before I could stand at that altar and receive the sacrament of Confirmation, he had to make sure my soul and my family line were clean.

Thank God, I could answer honestly. No, Father. Clean slate. No Freemasons in my family that I know of. No secret handshakes. No aprons. No oaths sworn to the Great Architect of the Universe while kneeling blindfolded at an altar that mocks the one true altar of Christ.

Father Fenton nodded, satisfied, and we moved forward. But that moment stuck with me like a burr on a saddle blanket. Why was this so important? Why did the Church care so much about whether my dead great-uncle had been a thirty-third degree Mason? Why was Freemasonry treated like spiritual dynamite, something so dangerous that even ancestral ties had to be severed before I could receive the sacraments?

The answer is simple, brothers and sisters, and it cuts to the bone: Freemasonry is the enemy. It always has been. And the Catholic Church has been sounding the alarm about this satanic counterfeit for nearly three hundred years.

Nearly Three Centuries of Papal Condemnation

Let me lay out the historical record, because this isn't speculation or conspiracy theory. This is documented fact, written in papal documents that stretch back almost to the founding of modern Freemasonry itself.

Modern speculative Freemasonry was officially organized in London in 1717 with the establishment of the Grand Lodge of England. Within twenty-one years, Pope Clement XII issued the papal bull In Eminenti on April 28, 1738, condemning Freemasonry and forbidding Catholics from joining under penalty of excommunication. Think about that timeline. Barely two decades after the Masons organized themselves, the Holy Father recognized the threat and moved to protect the faithful.

Pope Clement XII was an old man when he issued that condemnation, seventy-eight years old when elected Pope, suffering from gout, and completely blind during most of his pontificate. But spiritual blindness he did not have. He saw clearly what Freemasonry was: a secret society spreading rapidly across Europe, accepting men of any religion or no religion, bound together by secret oaths and hidden rituals. The Pope called these societies a danger to both temporal peace and the salvation of souls. He threatened excommunication for any Catholic who joined, and said that only the Pope himself or his delegated representative could lift that excommunication, except at the point of death.

This wasn't some random papal overreaction. In 1736, the Inquisition in Florence, Italy had investigated a Masonic lodge and condemned it in June 1737. The lodge's secretary, an Italian named Tommaso Crudeli, was arrested and interrogated. Meanwhile in France, Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury, chief minister to King Louis XV, branded the Freemasons as traitors and banned their assemblies in 1737. The pattern was already emerging: wherever Freemasonry went, it brought secrecy, subversion, and spiritual corruption.

Pope Benedict XIV doubled down on the condemnation in 1751 with his constitution Providas Romanorum. He inserted the full text of Pope Clement XII's original bull into his own document to make it crystal clear that the condemnation was irrevocable and applied to the future as well as the present. The message was unmistakable: this wasn't a temporary disciplinary measure. This was the Church identifying a permanent spiritual danger.

Then came the parade of papal condemnations that continued through the centuries. Pope Pius VII in 1821 issued Ecclesiam a Jesu Christo, linking Freemasonry to the revolutionary Carbonari movement and condemning their oath-bound secrecy and conspiracies against Church and state. Pope Leo XII in 1825 issued Quo Graviora, decreeing the prohibition of membership in Masonic Lodges in perpetuity. Pope Pius VIII condemned them in 1829. Pope Gregory XVI in 1832. Pope Pius IX issued multiple condemnations in 1846, 1849, 1864, 1865, 1869, and 1873. In that last encyclical, Etsi Multa, Blessed Pius IX detailed Masonic political attacks on the Church in Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, calling their machinations the synagogue of Satan.

But it was Pope Leo XIII who delivered what many consider the definitive papal condemnation of Freemasonry. On April 20, 1884, he issued the encyclical Humanum Genus, a comprehensive exposure of Masonic principles and their incompatibility with Catholic faith. Leo XIII didn't mince words. He described the human race as divided into two opposing kingdoms: the Kingdom of God on Earth, which is the true Church of Jesus Christ, and the kingdom of Satan, led on and assisted by that strongly organized and widespread association called the Freemasons.

Leo XIII identified naturalism as the core heresy of Freemasonry, the belief that human nature and human reason ought to be mistress and guide in all things. The Masons, he wrote, allow no dogma of religion or truth which cannot be understood by human intelligence. They recognize no teacher who ought to be believed by reason of his authority. They put man's reason above God's revelation. They make human intellect the measure of all truth rather than submitting to the truth revealed by Christ.

The Pope laid out specific Masonic teachings that were condemned: religious indifference, the promotion of public education that denied the Church's role, the approval that the people are the only source of sovereignty and that rulers have no authority except by commission of the people. These were the revolutionary principles tearing apart Christian civilization in the nineteenth century, and Freemasonry was the engine driving them forward.

In his 1892 encyclical Custodi di quella fede, Leo XIII warned Italian Catholics against becoming involved with liberal Masonic groups and urged them to engage in forms of Catholic Action away from the Masonic state. He wasn't being paranoid. He was watching Freemasonry actively work to destroy the temporal power of the papacy and reduce the Church's influence to nothing.

The condemnations didn't stop in the nineteenth century. The 1917 Code of Canon Law explicitly stated in Canon 2335 that Catholics who joined Masonic sects or similar associations that plot against the Church or legitimate civil authority incurred automatic excommunication reserved to the Holy See. Automatic. No trial needed. No appeal. Join the Lodge, lose your soul's connection to the sacraments.

When the Code of Canon Law was revised in 1983, some Catholics thought maybe the Church had softened its stance because the new code didn't explicitly mention Freemasonry by name. Wrong. On November 26, 1983, just before the new code took effect, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a declaration signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would later become Pope Benedict XVI. The declaration was absolutely clear: The Church's negative judgment in regard to Masonic associations remains unchanged since their principles have always been considered irreconcilable with the doctrine of the Church and therefore membership in them remains forbidden. Catholics who enroll in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion.

Grave sin. No Communion. End of discussion.

The German Bishops Conference spent six years, from 1974 to 1980, in formal dialogue with German Freemasons, studying their rituals and investigating their philosophy. After all that study and conversation, their conclusion was definitive: It is impossible to belong to the Catholic Church and to Freemasonry at the same time. Not difficult. Not complicated. Impossible.

And just when you might think this was all ancient history, Pope Francis himself reaffirmed the ban in November 2023. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, with the Pope's explicit approval, issued a letter in response to a Filipino bishop who was concerned about the large number of Catholics joining Masonic Lodges. The Vatican made it clear: Active membership in Freemasonry by any Catholic is absolutely forbidden because of the complete irreconcilability between Catholic doctrine and Freemasonry.

So we're talking about Pope Clement XII, Benedict XIV, Pius VII, Leo XII, Pius VIII, Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, and in our own time, Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis. At least eleven popes. Over six hundred official statements against Freemasonry. Nearly three centuries of consistent, unwavering condemnation.

This is not a relic of medieval thinking. This is the living voice of the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, protecting souls from spiritual poison.

The Doctrinal Abyss: Why Faith and the Lodge Cannot Mix

Now let's dig into the theology, because the Church doesn't condemn things just for fun. The prohibition against Freemasonry is rooted in fundamental incompatibilities between Masonic teaching and Catholic doctrine. These aren't minor disagreements. These are unbridgeable chasms.

Religious Indifferentism: All Roads Lead to Hell

Freemasonry teaches that all religions are basically equal paths to truth. It doesn't matter if you're Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, or anything else. As long as you believe in some kind of Supreme Being, you're good to go. They call this tolerance and enlightenment. The Church calls it what it is: a damnable lie that leads souls to perdition.

Jesus Christ said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Not a way. Not one of many equally valid paths. THE way. The only way. Salvation comes through Christ alone, and that salvation is found in His Church, the Catholic Church, which He founded on the rock of Peter.

Freemasonry's religious indifferentism directly contradicts this fundamental Christian truth. It says that Christ is just one teacher among many, one path among countless others. It reduces the Incarnation to an optional spiritual upgrade rather than the essential means of salvation. This is heresy in its purest form.

The Italian Masonic constitutions, published in 1868, state it plainly: Freemasonry proposes to itself as its first object to unite all free men in one vast family which may and ought to take the place of all Churches. Take the place of all Churches. They're not hiding their agenda. They want to replace the Church of Christ with their own counterfeit religion.

The Great Architect: A God Without a Face

Freemasons worship the Great Architect of the Universe. Sounds impressive, doesn't it? Sounds almost biblical. But here's the problem: the Great Architect is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is not the Father who sent His only begotten Son to die for our sins. He is not the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God in three Divine Persons.

The Great Architect is a deistic abstraction, a philosophical concept, a god who created the universe and then stepped back to let it run on natural laws without His intervention. This god doesn't answer prayers. He doesn't work miracles. He doesn't reveal himself in Scripture or through His Church. He's just there, somewhere, maybe, as a vague first cause to justify the Lodge's claim to be religious without actually believing anything specific about God.

Mexican priest Father Eduardo Hayen explains it perfectly: For Freemasonry, God is the Great Architect of the Universe, but it denies that Jesus is begotten and not created, of the same nature as the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, who became incarnate and spoke to all men to offer them salvation.

The Nicene Creed, which every Catholic professes at Mass, declares the divinity of Christ. Freemasonry denies it. You cannot affirm both. One excludes the other.

The Masonic conception of God is rooted in eighteenth-century Deism and Enlightenment rationalism. It's a god of human reason, not divine revelation. It's a god who makes no demands on your life, who doesn't judge sin, who doesn't offer grace through sacraments, who doesn't care what you believe as long as you believe something. This is not the God who revealed Himself to Moses in the burning bush. This is not the God who took on flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. This is an idol, plain and simple.

Blood Oaths and Spiritual Bondage

Now we get to one of the most disturbing aspects of Freemasonry: the oaths. When a man is initiated into the first degree of Masonry, the Entered Apprentice degree, he takes an oath that includes these words: Binding myself under no less a penalty than that of having my throat cut across, my tongue torn out by its roots, and buried in the rough sands of the sea at low water mark, where the tide ebbs and flows twice in twenty-four hours, should I ever knowingly violate this my solemn oath and obligation as an Entered Apprentice Mason. So help me God.

Read that again. The candidate swears on the Holy Bible that if he reveals the secrets of Masonry, he consents to having his throat cut and his tongue ripped out. The second degree, Fellow Craft, adds the penalty of having the left breast torn open and the heart plucked out and given to wild beasts and birds. The third degree, Master Mason, includes having the body severed in two, the bowels taken out and burned to ashes, scattered to the four winds.

These are blood curses. These are spiritual bindings. These are demonic invocations masquerading as fraternal obligations.

Now, Masons will tell you these penalties are symbolic, that they're just traditional language from the fifteenth century, that nobody actually enforces them. And that's true, they don't literally rip out the tongues of ex-Masons who write tell-all books. But that's not the point. The point is what these oaths do spiritually.

When a man kneels blindfolded at a Masonic altar, places his hand on the Bible, and swears these oaths, he is spiritually binding himself and his descendants. He is opening doors to the demonic. He is making his body, soul, and posterity vulnerable to spiritual attack. The demons don't care whether the penalties are literally enforced. They care that the man has voluntarily subjected himself to cursing and mutilation under oath before God.

Jesus Christ said, "But let your word 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No.' For whatever is more than these is from the evil one." The Apostle James echoes this: "But above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath. But let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No,' lest you fall into judgment."

These Masonic oaths violate direct biblical commands against rash swearing. They invoke God's name to witness curses upon one's own body for the sake of keeping secrets about handshakes and passwords. This is taking the Lord's name in vain in the most literal sense.

John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States, studied Freemasonry extensively and condemned these oaths in the strongest terms. He wrote that the candidate is sworn to keep secret what he does not know. He promises light but delivers darkness. The oaths include vicious penalties leading to death. Adams stated that in civilized society, the idea of mangling a body is horrific, and the Constitution forbids the infliction of cruel or unusual punishments, yet the Mason swears consent to the mutilation of his own body for the breach of an absurd and senseless secret.

In 1986, the Grand Lodge of England reluctantly dropped the physical penalties from their rituals, admitting they gave ready material for attack by enemies and detractors. But the spiritual damage had already been done across generations of Masons worldwide. And not all lodges followed England's lead. Many still use the full traditional penalties.

A Parallel Religion Mocking Christianity

The Church has identified Freemasonry not just as a fraternal organization or social club, but as a religion unto itself. A rival religion. A counterfeit that mimics and mocks Christianity.

The New Catholic Encyclopedia states it plainly: Freemasonry displays all the elements of religion, and as such it becomes a rival to the religion of the Gospel. It includes temples and altars, prayers, a moral code, worship, vestments, feast days, the promise of reward and punishment in the afterlife, a hierarchy, and initiation and burial rites.

Walk into a Masonic lodge and you'll find an altar with a Volume of Sacred Law on top. For Christians, it's a Bible. For Jews, it's the Torah. For Muslims, the Quran. The Masons claim this shows their respect for all religions. What it really shows is their belief that all these books are interchangeable, that the God of the Bible and Allah and the Brahman are all the same deity under different names. This is religious indifferentism codified in ritual.

The Masonic initiation ceremonies are deliberately designed to mimic Christian sacraments. The candidate seeks light, which represents spiritual illumination and rebirth. He's led out of darkness (the outside world) into light (the lodge). He kneels at an altar and takes solemn oaths. He's raised from death to life in the third degree, which the Masons themselves describe as a resurrection and a teaching of future immortality. These are Christian concepts stripped of Christian content and repackaged as Masonic wisdom.

The Masonic understanding of salvation is works-based. You advance through the degrees by learning the secrets, performing the rituals, living according to Masonic moral teaching. The higher you go, the more enlightened you become. If you live and die according to Masonic principles, you'll be admitted to the Celestial Lodge Above. No need for Christ's sacrifice on the Cross. No need for baptism or the Eucharist. Just climb the ladder of degrees and you'll earn your way to heaven.

This is exactly the kind of Gnostic heresy that the Church has fought against since the apostolic era. The idea that salvation comes through secret knowledge available only to initiates, rather than through faith in Christ available freely to all who believe.

Albert Pike and the Luciferian Question

No discussion of Freemasonry's spiritual darkness would be complete without addressing Albert Pike, the most influential Masonic writer in American history. Pike was a thirty-third degree Mason, Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite's Southern Jurisdiction from 1859 until his death in 1891, and author of Morals and Dogma, the massive tome that has served as the philosophical foundation for American Freemasonry for over a century.

In Morals and Dogma, Pike refers to the papacy as a deadly, treacherous enemy and writes that the papacy has been for a thousand years the torturer and curse of Humanity, the most shameless imposture, in its pretense to spiritual power of all ages. So much for Masonic respect for all religions.

But the most controversial passage in Pike's work is this, from page 321: LUCIFER, the Light-bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, sensual or selfish Souls? Doubt it not!

Now, Masonic apologists will tell you this passage is taken out of context, that Pike was actually condemning Lucifer, that he was quoting from the Book of Revelation's condemnation of those who follow the Beast. And technically, that's partly true. Pike does say earlier in that same paragraph that the Apocalypse is the apotheosis of that Sublime Faith which aspires to God alone and despises all the pomps and works of Lucifer.

But here's the thing: Pike mentions Lucifer and the Devil about forty times in Morals and Dogma. He discusses Lucifer as the bearer of light, the bringer of knowledge, the one who blinds the feeble but enlightens the wise. Whether or not Pike personally believed in worshiping a literal Satan, the language he uses and the concepts he promotes are Luciferian in their essence. They elevate human reason and secret knowledge over divine revelation. They present the serpent's promise from the Garden of Eden, you will be as gods, knowing good and evil, as the core of Masonic enlightenment.

Moreover, at the higher degrees of Masonry, particularly in the Scottish Rite, the symbolism becomes explicitly occult. The eighteenth degree is called Knight of the Rose Croix, borrowing from Rosicrucian mysticism. Other degrees reference Kabbalah, Egyptian mystery religions, and various forms of ancient paganism. The Temple of Solomon is reimagined not as the dwelling place of the God of Israel but as a symbol of universal truth accessible through human wisdom.

The Catholic Church doesn't claim that every Mason consciously worships Satan. Most low-level Masons have no idea what they've gotten themselves into. They joined for the networking, the charitable work, the camaraderie. They're good men who've been deceived. But the system itself, particularly at the higher levels, is rooted in a worldview that exalts human reason above God, that seeks enlightenment apart from Christ, that treats all religions as equally valid paths, and that binds its members through oaths that invoke demonic curses. That's the definition of serving the father of lies, whether you realize it or not.

The War Against the Church: History Written in Blood

Freemasonry hasn't just taught doctrines opposed to the Catholic faith. It has actively worked throughout history to destroy the Church, to strip her of her influence, to undermine her teaching authority, and to persecute her faithful. The historical record is clear and damning.

In Italy during the mid-1800s, the movement to unify the country was infiltrated and directed by Freemasons intent on abolishing the papacy and restricting the rights of the Catholic Church. The period from 1870, when Rome was captured by Italian forces, until 1929, when the Lateran Treaties were signed, is known as the Prisoner in the Vatican era, because the Pope was effectively trapped in Vatican City while Masonic forces controlled the Italian government. Pope Pius IX issued the encyclical Etsi Nos in 1873, complaining bitterly about how the post-unification Italian state denigrated the role of the Church, which he blamed squarely on Freemasonry.

In France, Freemasons dominated the bitterly anti-clerical Third Republic from 1870 to 1940. In 1877, the Grand Orient of France eliminated the requirement to believe in God or the immortality of the soul, openly admitting atheists into their ranks. This atheistic Continental Freemasonry spread throughout Latin countries. The French Masonic government enacted laws in the late 1800s and early 1900s that closed monasteries, expelled religious orders, confiscated all Church property, and systematically removed Catholic influence from public life. The Law of Associations in 1901 and the Law of Separation of Church and State in 1905 were Masonic projects designed to destroy the Church's social power.

In Mexico, prominent Freemasons played major roles in the Mexican Revolution and the horrific persecution of the Church that followed. Presidents Plutarco Elías Calles and others in the 1920s and 1930s enacted laws closing churches, executing priests, and banning religious education. The Cristeros War, in which tens of thousands of Catholic laymen took up arms to defend their faith against the Masonic government, is one of the great unknown martyrdoms of the twentieth century. As recently as 2007, the Masonic Grand Lodge of the Valley of Mexico fought efforts to allow the Church authority over its own schools and communications, with a spokesman declaring that the Catholic hierarchy wants to dictate a political policy and that priests should return to their Churches.

In Portugal in 1910, Freemasons took control of the government and enacted laws restricting Church activities, particularly in education. Churches and monasteries were vandalized and closed. The persecution was fierce enough that it set the stage for the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima in 1917, during which the Blessed Mother warned about the errors of Russia spreading and the need for devotion to her Immaculate Heart to prevent war and persecution.

In Spain, during the lead-up to the Spanish Civil War, Masonic-influenced Republican forces burned hundreds of churches, murdered thousands of priests, nuns, and religious brothers, and attempted to completely eliminate the Church's presence in Spanish society. The violence was satanic in its fury, with nuns' bodies exhumed and put on display, priests executed by firing squad, and churches systematically desecrated.

The pattern repeats across Europe and Latin America: wherever Freemasonry gained political power, the Church suffered. Wherever the Lodge rose, the Cross was cast down.

American Freemasonry has been more subtle but no less hostile to the Catholic Church. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Masons turned decidedly anti-Catholic and nativist. They were conspicuous in both the original Ku Klux Klan of the Reconstruction era and the revived KKK of the 1920s. Masonic influence led the fight against parochial schools, advocated for absolute separation of Church and state, and promoted anti-Catholic bigotry in American politics and culture.

Father Michael McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus in 1882 specifically to offer Catholic men an alternative to the Masonic Lodges. He saw that Catholics needed fraternal fellowship and mutual aid, but he also recognized that the spiritual dangers of Freemasonry made it impossible for Catholics to join. The Knights of Columbus became wildly successful precisely because it offered everything good that Masonry promised, genuine charity, fraternal bonds, social support, without the occult oaths, without the religious indifferentism, without the anti-Catholic hostility, and without the spiritual bondage.

The Testimony of Exorcists: Generational Curses and Demonic Oppression

Now we come to the most disturbing part of this whole discussion: the testimony of Catholic exorcists regarding Freemasonry and demonic activity. These are not wild-eyed conspiracy theorists. These are priests trained and appointed by their bishops to perform the Church's ministry of exorcism, men who have spent decades on the front lines of spiritual warfare, casting out demons in the name of Jesus Christ.

And what they will tell you, consistently and emphatically, is that Freemasonry is one of the most common entry points for demonic oppression in family lines.

Father Gabriele Amorth, who served as the chief exorcist of the Diocese of Rome for decades, stated clearly: Every form of magic is practiced with recourse to Satan. The Masonic rituals, with their occult symbols, their invocations, their secret rites performed in the darkness, are cut from the same cloth as the mystery religions of paganism. They are spiritual counterfeits designed to lead souls away from Christ and into bondage to the father of lies.

Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, a prominent American exorcist, details multiple cases in his published exorcism diaries. In one case, a man named James was a severe alcoholic who, after a near-death illness, stopped drinking and tried to return to his Catholic faith. But when he started going to Mass, he began having strange reactions. He blacked out during religious practices. At night, he felt attacked by evil forces. He woke up with large bruises and scratches on his body, in sets of threes as a mockery of the Trinity. Bottles of alcohol would mysteriously appear around him even though he had stopped drinking. His fiancée actually witnessed bottles suddenly materialize at his side.

The exorcist worked with James for months, making some progress but sensing something blocking full liberation. Finally, on an inspiration, the priest asked: Is there any Freemasonry or other cult involvement in your family background? James responded that his grandfather was a thirty-third degree Mason. The exorcist then led James through prayers to renounce and break any Masonic curses from his family line. In the next session, James experienced great relief. He said it was like a switch turned and he was liberated. The demons never returned.

In another case detailed by Monsignor Rossetti, a family of four came for help with symptoms of demonic oppression. The exorcist asked if any family member had ever belonged to the Masons. The father admitted he had joined but just for social purposes. Classic. Most Masons have no evil intent. They join for the networking, the business contacts, the social advantage. But they have no idea what spiritual doors they're opening, not just for themselves but for their children and grandchildren.

Kyle Clement, assistant to the well-known exorcist Father Chad Ripperger, has extensive experience dealing with Masonic curses. In an interview, Clement explained that the Masonic oaths invoke demons to have access to the man's descendants to the third and fourth generation. This is based on Exodus 20:5 and Numbers 14:18, where God says He visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Him.

The Freemason, knowingly or unknowingly, pledges his future generations in order to gain status and power. At the eighteenth degree and higher, lodge members begin explicitly pledging their descendants, and the ritualistic practices become openly anti-God and anti-Catholic. In some rituals, they are instructed to stomp upon a papal tiara as symbolic of casting off the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.

Clement describes the curse as operating through what exorcists call a conscripted demon, a demon assigned to that family line by the oath of the ancestor. The demon becomes active when the descendant turns toward holiness, particularly when someone converts to Catholicism, gives up a life of sin, or enters seminary or religious life. Then the curse is triggered and demonic oppression begins to manifest outwardly.

He detailed one case of a young man with no prior health issues who mysteriously fell ill every single time he entered the seminary. All his health problems would disappear as soon as he left. This happened at three different seminaries. Finally, he was freed after prayers of deliverance from a Masonic curse were prayed over him by an exorcist. The young man is now ordained and serving as a priest.

Common manifestations of Masonic curses include respiratory and stomach disorders, chronic illnesses with no clear medical cause, inability to conceive children, repeated miscarriages, financial troubles despite adequate income, broken relationships, addiction patterns, and most significantly, serious obstacles whenever someone in the family line tries to pursue a religious vocation or deepen their commitment to Catholic faith.

The LiberChristo deliverance ministry, which works closely with exorcists, states that the Freemasonry curse passes away after the fourth generation if the curse is not reaffirmed. But that means children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren can all suffer demonic oppression because their ancestor took an oath in a dimly lit room wearing an apron and kneeling before a Masonic altar.

In one particularly powerful case, Monsignor Rossetti was performing an exorcism on a young woman who had generational evil spirits including Freemasonry in her family line. She was pursuing a religious vocation and the demons were having none of it. At one point during the exorcism, an attending priest took out a relic of Father Michael McGivney, the recently beatified founder of the Knights of Columbus, and handed it to the exorcist. Remember, Father McGivney founded the Knights specifically as a Catholic alternative to Freemasonry. When the exorcist invoked Blessed Father McGivney's intercession, the demons reacted with absolute fury. They screamed and fought but were ultimately expelled. The exorcist noted that the reactions of the demons confirmed the sanctity of Father McGivney and his effectiveness against the spirits of Freemasonry.

This is why Father Fenton asked me those questions before my Confirmation. This is why priests are trained to inquire about Masonic connections in family lines. This is why the Church takes this threat with deadly seriousness. The stakes are eternal. We're not talking about social exclusion or hurt feelings. We're talking about the state of immortal souls. We're talking about demonic bondage that can last for generations.

The Call to Choose: No Middle Ground

If you're reading this and you're a Catholic who has joined a Masonic Lodge, or if you're considering it, I'm begging you: get out. Walk away. Renounce those oaths. Confess your involvement to a priest. Seek absolution. Undergo prayers of deliverance to break any spiritual bondage. Return to full communion with the Church.

If you have ancestors who were Masons, even if you've never joined yourself, you should seriously consider going to a priest and specifically renouncing their involvement and any spiritual curses that may have been passed down through your family line. There are specific prayers of renunciation that priests can pray with you or over you. Many exorcists and deliverance ministries have these prayers readily available.

The Church isn't being arbitrary or cruel in her prohibition of Freemasonry. She's being a loving mother who sees the snake in the garden and warns her children to stay away. She's exercising the authority given to her by Christ to bind and loose, to guard the deposit of faith, to protect souls from error and damnation.

You cannot serve two masters. You cannot pledge ultimate allegiance to both Christ and the Lodge. One will inevitably triumph over the other. And I'm telling you, from the depths of my soul, if you choose the Lodge, you're choosing the losing side. You're choosing the kingdom that will fall. You're choosing darkness disguised as light.

The Lodge can offer you fellowship, business connections, charitable opportunities, social prestige. Fine. You know where else you can find those things? The Knights of Columbus. Your parish. Catholic service organizations. Catholic business groups. You don't need the Lodge for any of that.

What the Lodge offers that you can't get anywhere else is spiritual poison disguised as enlightenment. It offers a false sense of belonging that comes at the cost of your relationship with Christ. It offers secrets that aren't worth knowing and rituals that open doors you can never close on your own.

Jesus said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Freemasonry traffics in secrets and shadows. It claims to possess hidden knowledge that will enlighten the initiate. But true enlightenment, true freedom, comes not from secret rituals but from the open revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

The great mystery that was hidden for ages has been revealed. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God the Father sent His only Son to die on the Cross for the sins of the world. Christ rose from the dead, conquered death, and opened the gates of Heaven. This is the truth. This is the mystery. And it's not hidden behind thirty-three degrees of initiation. It's proclaimed from every Catholic altar at every Mass throughout the world.

You don't need secret handshakes to access God. You don't need arcane rituals. You don't need to climb a ladder of degrees. You need baptism. You need faith. You need the sacraments. You need the Church that Christ founded on the rock of Peter.

The Evidence Is Overwhelming

Let me summarize what we've covered because the evidence against Freemasonry is absolutely overwhelming:

First, we have nearly three centuries of consistent papal condemnation. From Pope Clement XII in 1738 to Pope Francis in 2023, at least eleven popes have condemned Freemasonry. Over six hundred official Church statements. The 1983 Declaration signed by Cardinal Ratzinger explicitly states that Catholics who join are in grave sin and may not receive Communion. This isn't ambiguous. This isn't outdated. This is current, binding Catholic teaching.

Second, we have the doctrinal incompatibilities. Freemasonry teaches religious indifferentism, the lie that all religions are equally valid. It worships the Great Architect, a deistic abstraction that denies the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. It promotes naturalism and exalts human reason above divine revelation. These are not minor theological differences. These are fundamental heresies that strike at the heart of Christian faith.

Third, we have the blood oaths. Masons swear to keep secrets they haven't learned yet, under penalties of having their throats cut, tongues ripped out, hearts plucked out, and bodies mutilated. These oaths violate direct biblical commands against rash swearing. They invoke God's name to witness curses upon one's own body. They spiritually bind not just the Mason himself but his descendants to the third and fourth generation.

Fourth, we have Freemasonry functioning as a parallel religion. It has temples, altars, prayers, moral codes, vestments, feast days, initiation rituals, burial rites, and a hierarchy. It offers salvation through works and secret knowledge rather than through faith in Christ. It deliberately mimics and mocks Christian sacraments. It is Gnosticism repackaged for the modern era.

Fifth, we have the historical record of Masonic warfare against the Church. In Italy, France, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, and across Latin America, wherever Freemasonry gained political power, the Church was persecuted. Churches were burned. Priests were murdered. Religious orders were expelled. Catholic education was suppressed. This isn't ancient history. In Mexico, the Masonic Grand Lodge was still fighting against Catholic education as recently as 2007.

Sixth, we have the testimony of exorcists. Priests appointed by their bishops to perform the Church's ministry of deliverance consistently report that Freemasonry is one of the most common entry points for demonic oppression in family lines. They have documented case after case of people suffering mysterious illnesses, addiction, financial troubles, and obstacles to religious vocations because of ancestral involvement in Freemasonry. They have witnessed demons react with fury to the invocation of saints like Blessed Father McGivney who opposed Freemasonry. They have seen people instantly liberated after renouncing Masonic curses.

Seventh, we have the admissions of Masonic authors themselves. Albert Pike called the papacy a deadly enemy and the torturer of humanity. Pike wrote extensively about Lucifer as the light-bearer. Italian Masonic constitutions from 1868 explicitly state that Freemasonry aims to take the place of all Churches. These aren't Catholic conspiracy theories. These are Masonic sources admitting their hostility to the Church and their religious pretensions.

The evidence is not circumstantial. It's not speculative. It's not paranoid. It's documented, verifiable, and overwhelming. Freemasonry is incompatible with Catholic faith. Period.

Stand With the Church or Fall With the Lodge

As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Not the Great Architect. Not the Worshipful Master. The Lord Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave Himself for us, who calls us not to secret societies but to His one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.

I thank God that Father Fenton asked me those hard questions during my vetting process before Confirmation. I thank God that the Church takes this threat seriously enough to guard the gates against it. And I thank God that I can stand here today, a son of the Catholic Church, with no ties to Freemasonry, no oaths binding my soul, no spiritual landmines waiting to explode under my feet or under the feet of my children and grandchildren.

If you're on the fence, if you're confused, if you're tempted to think the Church is being unreasonable or outdated, I'm telling you straight: trust the Church. Trust two thousand years of wisdom. Trust the consistent teaching of the popes. Trust the warnings of the exorcists. Trust the testimony of those who have left the Lodge and returned to the fullness of Catholic faith.

The Cross and the Compass cannot coexist. You must choose. You cannot be a lukewarm Catholic with one foot in the Church and one foot in the Lodge. Christ said He would vomit the lukewarm out of His mouth. Make your choice. Make it clear. Make it total.

Choose Christ. Choose His Church. Choose the sacraments. Choose the truth that is revealed openly, not hidden behind secret oaths. Choose the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not a vague deistic abstraction. Choose the faith that leads to salvation, not the enlightenment that leads to damnation.

I've laid out the case as clearly as I can. The Church's teaching is unambiguous. The historical evidence is damning. The spiritual dangers are real and documented. The choice is yours.

But know this: if you choose Freemasonry, you're choosing against Christ. You're choosing against His Church. You're choosing against your own eternal salvation. And no amount of charitable work, no degree of social prestige, no business connection, no fraternal bond is worth the price of your immortal soul.

The Lodge promises enlightenment but delivers darkness. It promises brotherhood but delivers bondage. It promises wisdom but delivers lies. It promises to make you a better man but instead makes you a worse Catholic, and ultimately, if you persist in it, no Catholic at all.

Christ offers something infinitely better. He offers grace. He offers truth. He offers forgiveness. He offers the Eucharist, His own Body and Blood. He offers eternal life in the presence of the Father. And He offers it freely to all who come to Him in faith, no secret handshakes required, no blood oaths demanded, no thirty-three degrees to climb.

Just come. Just believe. Just be baptized into His death and resurrection. Just receive Him in the sacraments. Just live in His Church, submitted to His authority, guided by His Spirit.

That's the narrow road. That's the way of the Cross. And that's the only road that leads to life.

The Compass points in every direction and leads nowhere. The Cross points to Calvary and from Calvary to Heaven.

Choose the Cross. Reject the Compass. And may God have mercy on those who choose otherwise.

Because the Lodge knows who its enemy is.

And it is not you.

It is the Church.

It is the priesthood.

It is the sacraments.

It is the Eucharist.

It is the Cross planted in history, dripping with blood, declaring once and for all that salvation is not earned by climbing ladders of enlightenment but received by kneeling at the foot of Calvary.

You were not baptized into the Great Architect. You were baptized into Christ.

You were not sealed at Confirmation for a Celestial Lodge Above. You were sealed with the Holy Spirit for the Kingdom of God.

You were not redeemed by symbols, passwords, or degrees. You were redeemed by wounds.

So choose.

Choose the Cross that saves over the Compass that deceives.

Choose the altar where Christ gives His Body and Blood over the altar where men swear oaths they do not understand.

Choose the Church that tells you the truth, even when it hurts, over the brotherhood that tells you what you want to hear while binding your soul in chains.

As for me, I thank God for a priest who loved my soul enough to ask hard questions. I thank God for a Church that does not flinch when the enemy dresses himself in charity and civility. I thank God that before I was sealed with the Holy Spirit, the doors were checked, the ground was cleared, and the bloodline was guarded.

The Cross and the Compass do not point in the same direction.

One leads to the empty tomb.

The other leads back to the dark.

There is no coexistence.

Only a choice.

~by Jeff Callaway

Texas Outlaw Poet

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