As reported in the Belgian daily Le Soir on 17 February, Freemasons should not be allowed to open a bureau in Brussels to lobby against religious organisations in EU institutions. Leading Freemasons and critics of Freemasonry agree in substance that Freemasonry promotes a total world view, namely that of the so-called Ancient Wisdom or Mysteries or, more precisely, of early Gnosticism, as it has been carried to the modern period. especially by the Kabbalah and Theosophy.

This is a pantheistic atheism that uses all available elements in a syncretistic way, attempting to encompass everything in a notion of universal brotherhood or cosmic harmony without the true God. It combines an appeal to spiritual ideals like freedom, fraternity and equality with the imposition of a materialistic, this-worldly pragmatism that reaches both the political order and all elements of private life. It has most commonly attempted to present itself as a “deism” that all reasonable men supposedly would accept. However, like the historical phenomenon of deism in general, while appealing to reason and the god it reaches (the Great Architect, who supposedly created the world but then left it for reasonable men to run), it denies reason’s ability to reach knowledge of the natural moral law and reduces all to a mystical- pragmatic imposition of laws by reasonable men.

In pursuit of its basic project of transforming society into a secular state and undoing its Christian traditions, Freemasonry has enlisted Protestants and Jews to forge a notion of separation of Church and State that will eventually undo laws or policies sustaining basic moral law, especially in relation to marriage, sexuality and abortion.

Paul Kokoski

HAMILTON, CANADA