Speculative Freemasonry with its openness to all religions, to believers and atheists alike, and its focus on self-improvement, and a vague, idealistic vision of a Utopian society became the perfect vehicle for atheism and for those who like the French philosophe, Voltaire, were determined to destroy the Catholic Church.
But for members of the lower levels of Freemasonry, it was a gentlemen’s club, a means to make and strengthen social connections and so advance in their respective careers. A fellow Mason—a brother—would make sure you rose up in the ranks and that you were introduced to other Masons of influence who could help further your career.
One can see why Mozart, a freelance musician rather than an employee at the influential court of a Prince or Duke, would be attracted by the opportunities presented by the Lodge.
Haydn, Kapellmeister to the prestigious and enormously wealthy Esterházy family, would have had no such need for advancement.
Jesuits Against the Freemasons
Furthermore, although initially even Jesuits and other priests had joined Freemason lodges, seeing no harm in them, before long the Church was sternly admonishing the faithful to stay away from Freemasonry on pain of excommunication. The Jesuits were the first to ban their members from joining the Lodges. They realized that the seemingly benign ideas of Freemasonry actually undermined the Church and the Truth.
The Freemasons never referred to the Creator as God, calling him the Great Architect instead. Insisting that all religions are equally true and good, they were actually suggesting that each was equally false and, therefore, a lie. How credible could the alleged belief in a Creator be if the group also welcomed those who categorically denied His existence?
How can a single group hold equally to several contradictory truths: That there’s no God and that there is a God; that God is a Trinity of Three Divine Persons and that God is only one Divine Person; that Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity made flesh and that Jesus is simply a good man, a wise teacher, but certainly not Divine? Either one statement in each pair is false or both are false. Logically, they can’t both be true.
But the Church’s warnings against Freemasonry were largely ignored—until it was too late.
And because the Jesuits were considered the Pope’s men, his right hand in fact, and because they had fought long and hard and most successfully against the heresies promulgated by Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and others who’d broken away from the Church, they became a target for the Freemasons.
By this time in the mid-eighteenth century there were Lodges all over Europe and many Lodge members were in positions of influence at various courts. Almost simultaneously, the Jesuits were suppressed in France, Spain, and Portugal, and other places in Europe.
Before long, sufficient pressure had been put on the Pope to compel him to officially disband the order. They survived, oddly enough, in Frederick II’s Prussia and Catherine the Great’s Russia.
Efforts to Destroy the Church
Voltaire exulted. It was the first step in crushing the wretch, the Church. Take down the Jesuits, he said, and in twenty years there’d be nothing left of the Church.
Certainly, the Revolutionaries in France tried their very best to destroy the Church. In France, the clergy was forced to take an oath of allegiance to the French state or be denounced and persecuted. They were regarded as employees of the State and were to be appointed by the State rather than by the Church as is proper.
Even the Popes weren’t spared. Pope Pius VI was taken prisoner by the French troops under the Revolutionaries in 1796 and his successor was arrested by Napoleon’s men.
The effort was in vain. The Church survived. But the damage had already been done.
Europe Wakes Up
Freemason ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity had infected the French Revolution and through it become part of the modern world. Even those who, like Maria Carolina—Marie Antoinette’s sister and Queen of Naples—had initially championed Freemasonry began to see, albeit too late, what these ideals truly meant.
Liberty referred to an utter lack of moral constraints, a license to do exactly as one pleased. Equality and fraternity meant helping oneself to other people’s property.
Evidence of these dangerous ideas and the true purpose of the Freemasons—to overturn Church and government and throw society into chaos—was found in the papers of a courier struck dead by lightning in 1785.
He’d been riding from Frankfurt to Paris with instructions for the overthrow of Church and Monarchy in France. The papers he was carrying were handed over to the Bavarian government, which immediately sent out warnings to every European court. Unfortunately, they were never taken seriously.
By the time people like the Queen of Naples began to see the light, the Revolution had already begun in France. But Maria Carolina now determined to put a stop to Freemasonry in her own kingdom. And later in Austria, under Joseph II, the development of Lodges was severely curtailed. And later still, Freemasonry was banned altogether.
We’ll never know why Haydn never attended a single Lodge meeting after his initiation. Perhaps, he was just too busy. Or perhaps as a devout Catholic, he saw through the benign façade of the intellectuals to the dangerous ideas of revolution, violence, and anarchy they secretly fomented.
Freemasonry in the Modern World
Freemasonry like the Jesuits and the Catholic Church continues to exist.
Freemasonry took hold in the United States as well. But an unfortunate incident involving the disappearance and murder of a Lodge member who subsequently renounced his membership and started revealing Masonic secrets resulted in the group falling into disfavor. However it still exists. The Mexican government was for the longest time under Freemason control as well. Wine at the time was banned in the country because it was used in the Mass.
And today, the French President openly praises their ideology.
Anti-Church Sentiments
How do we know they’re still against the Church? In 1917, celebrating their two hundredth anniversary in Rome, the Freemasons waved a banner predicting that Satan would soon reign in Vatican and that the Pope would be his slave.
An investigation begun under Pope Paul VI (who suspected “the smoke of Satan” had entered the Church) revealed that many key Vatican figures were Lodge members. These were the people appointing bishops (Cardinal Baggio) and in charge of reforming the liturgy (Annibale Bugnini). The Vatican Bank had been taken over as well.
Many Popes including Pope Benedict XVI have lamented the spirit of modernism that seems to have taken hold of theologians and cardinals alike, so that rather than uphold the faith, they water it down. Doctrines of the past are sneered at in the spirit of ecumenism or meeting modern sentiments.
But back in the eighteenth century, had Haydn divined the true motives of Freemasonry? Had he realized that far from being an elite gentlemen’s club, it was the road to perdition?
Unfortunately, we don’t know. All we know is that he never attended a meeting and after two years was struck off the member rolls.