FREEMASON OUTRAGE ON POPE PIUS IX.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 84, 5 December 1874, Page 6

FREEMASON OUTRAGE ON POPE PIUS IX.

HWe make no apology for publishing the following from the New York * Freeman's Journal' of the sth September last. It appears to us necessary that our friends and the public should not be left in ignorance of the persistent efforts of the Freemasons to make people believe that our Holy Father has been or is a Freemason ; and we feel assured our esteemed American contemporary will not find fault with ns for bodily transferring to our Editorial columns its "leader on the subject. This leader has the same heading as that given above : —

It seems to us cruel to Catholic sentiment that we 'should be asked, not one time, nor twice, but almost each recurring year to deny that our Holy Fatheb Poms Pius IX., was ever a IVeemason Still, as we have received many requests, within the last few weeks' ■we suppose it is not out of place, once more, to show the shameless' pess of the charge. The Hoiy Fatheb himself, about two years ago in his humility, in speaking of other calumnies against him, mentioned this outrageous charge, and said :— " Thanks to the care of the Mother Immaculate, I had, through all my youth, a tender regard for my religious duties, and never had the temptation to wander into societies forbidden by the Holy Church !" The baseness of this falsehood, of the Holy Fathbb ever having been a Freemason, comes from the fact that membership in Masonry was, and is, forbidden to Catholics, under pain of excommunication - and that, in him, it would suppose not only a falling from the Faith' but a vile hypocrisy— because, from his teuderest youth, he wa» constantly an aspirant for the holy priesthood.

It was a vile invention of Mazzini, in 1847- '4B, to circulate the story that Poie Pitts LX. was a Freemason. So f oolish "was the fiction that its promoters, when asked when he became such, fixed-the year 1808! when Giovanni Mama. Mastai-Febbetti, now PdrE Pius IX., was not seventeen years old! Freemasons will acknowledge that a youth of that age could not have been a Mason. But, moreover, it happens that was the very year in which, in October, at the hands of Monsignor Isconthi, Bishop of Voltarra, he received tonsure, thus entering the Ecclesiastical Estate.

The absurdity of the allegation, in regard to one who had the history of his life accounted for, year by year, from his early youth, did not need the good-natured denial of the story, given by the Hoit Father. And, this notwithstanding, we have a photograph of Popb Proa IX. — circulated through Europe by Jews — from one of whom we happened to get it — representing the Pope in the insignia of a Grand Master Mason !"