What are the Masons? Are Catholics allowed to belong to this organization?
Before addressing the question at hand, let’s first consider the organization itself. The origins of the Masons or what is officially called freemasonry are hard to pinpoint. With the decline of cathedral building in the aftermath of the Protestant movement, mason guilds began accepting non-masons as members to bolster their dwindling membership. Eventually, the non-masons outnumbered the masons, and the guilds became places for the discussion of ethics and morality while retaining the secret signs, symbols and gestures of the original guild. Four such guilds merged in 1717 in London, England, to form the Grand Lodge of Freemasons. (A “freemason” was a highly skilled mason who enjoyed the privileges of membership in a trade guild.) Masons gradually spread throughout the world. Old “handbooks” of freemasonry define the organization as “a peculiar system of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols,” “a science which is engaged in the search after the divine truth,” and “the
