We have seen that the use made of Freemasonry by the Atheists of the
last century was a very elastic one. As it came from England it had
all the qualities required by the remorseless revolutionists, who so
eagerly and so ably employed it for their purposes. Its hypocritical
professions of Theism, of acceptation of the Bible, and of beneficence;
its terrible oaths of secrecy; its grotesque and absurd ceremonial, to
which any meaning from the most silly to the deepest and darkest could be
given; its ascending degrees, each one demanding additional secrets, to
be kept not only from outsiders, but from the lower degrees; the death
penalty for indiscretion or disobedience; the system of mystery capable
of any extension; the hidden hierarchy; in a word, all its qualities
could be improved and elaborated at will by the Infidels of the Continent
who had made British Masonry their own. Soon the strict subjection of
all subordinate lodges to whatever Grand Orient or Mother Lodge they
spring from, and on which they depend; and, above all, the complete
understanding between the directors of the Masonic “powers,” that is of
the different rites into which the Masonry is divided, placed its entire
government in a select ruling body, directed in turn by a small committee
of the ablest conspirators, elected by and known to that body alone.
The whole rank and file of Masonry receive their orders at present from
this inner body, who are unknown to the mere masons of the lodges. The
members of the committee deputed by the lodges are able to testify to the
fact of the authenticity of the orders. Those who rule from the hidden
recesses take care that these deputies shall be men worthy of confidence.
A lodge, therefore, has its master, its officers, and management; but
its orders come through a channel that appears to be nothing, whereas
it is everything in the movement of the whole mass. Thus it happens
that the master of a lodge or the grand master of a province, or of a
nation, whose high-sounding titles may make him seem to outsiders to be
everything, is in reality often nothing at all in the actual government
of Masonry. The real power rests with the hidden committee of direction,
and confidential agents, who move almost invisibly amongst the officers
and members of the lodges. These hidden agents of iniquity are vigilant
spies, secret “wire pullers,” who are seldom promoted to any office, but
content themselves with the real power which they are selected to use
with dexterity and care.
It was through this system that Weishaupt obtained the adoption
of illuminated Masonry at the convent of Wilhelmsbad. Through the
machinations of Knigg, he obtained from the delegates there assembled,
the approval of his plan that the ultimate end of Freemasonry and all
secret plotting should be—1ᵒ, Pantheism—a form of Atheism which flatters
Masonic pride. 2ᵒ, Communism of goods, women, and general concerns. 3ᵒ,
That the means to arrive at these ends should be the destruction of the
Church, and of all forms of Christianity; the obliteration of every kind
of supernatural belief; and, finally, the removal of all existing human
governments to make way for a universal republic in which the utopian
ideas of complete liberty from existing social, moral, and religious
restraint, absolute equality, and social fraternity, should reign. When
these ends should be attained, but not till then, the secret work of the
Atheistic Freemasons should cease.
At the convent of Wilhelmsbad, Weishaupt had the means taken to carry out
this determination. There Masonry became one organized Atheistic mass,
while being still permitted to assume many fantastic shapes. The Knights
Rosicrucian, the Templars, the Knights of Beneficence, the Brothers of
Amity were strictly united to Illuminated Masonry. All could be reached
through Masonry itself. All were placed under the same government.
Masonry was made more elastic than ever. When, as in the cases of Ireland
and Poland, an enslaved nationality should be found, which the supreme
Invisible Directory wished to revolutionize, and when, at the same time,
the existing respect for the words of the Vicar of Christ made Masonry
hateful, a secret political society was ordered to be formed on the
plan of Freemasonry, but with some other name. It was to put on, after
the example of Masonry itself, the semblance of zeal and respect for
religion, but it was bound to have horrible oaths, ascending degrees,
centres, the terrible death penalty for indiscretion or treason, to be,
in essence, and in every sense, if not in name, a society identical with
Freemasonry. The supreme direction of the Revolution was to contrive
by sure means to have adepts high and powerful in its management; and
the society was, even if founded to defend the Catholic religion, thus
sure, sooner or later, to diverge from the Church and to become hostile
to religion and to its ministers. The Atheistic revolutionists of the
Continent in the last century, learned to perfection the art to effect
this; and hence the ready assistance which men who were murdering
priests in Paris and throughout France and Italy, gave to the Catholics
of Ireland in ’98. Was it to relieve the Catholics of Ireland from
persecution, while they themselves were to a far more frightful extent
oppressing the Catholic Church, the Catholic priesthood, Catholic
religious, and Catholic people, for no other reason than the profession
of the Catholic faith in France and Italy? By no means. They, at the very
time, had already corrupted Irishmen. Some of these were open Infidels
and others were Jacobite Freemasons of no particular attachment to any
form of Christianity. They shared in Napoleon’s indifference to religion,
and were as ready to profess zeal for their Catholic fellow-countrymen,
as he and his soldiers were ready to profess “love” for the Alkoran and
the Prophet in Egypt, or for St. Januarius, in Naples. But they and their
leaders in Black Masonry knew that once they could unite even the very
best and truest Catholic men in Ireland into a secret society on such
lines as I have described, they would soon find an entrance for Atheism
into the country. They would not be wanting in means to win recruits
by degrees from the best intentioned Catholics so bound by oaths, and
so subjected to hidden influences. They were adepts at proselytism,
especially amongst those who gave up liberty and will to unknown masters.
If Irishmen, few indeed, thank God, but still Irishmen and Catholics,
had lost their faith in France at the period of the Revolution, what
could save the Irish Catholics in Ireland from the efforts and example
of French and Irish Atheistic liberators? Catholics suffered terribly
under the Protestant domination, but they nobly kept their faith through
the whole of that dreadful period. Their condition was bad during the
penal days, but if the French obtained the mastery, even for a decade,
at the Revolution, it would be worse, I believe, for the Faith and
liberty of Irish Catholics, than the previous two centuries of heretical
persecution. Providence, moved by the prayers of God’s Mother, of St.
Patrick, and of the innumerable host of Irish Saints and Martyrs, no
doubt, saved the country; and the agency of the Atheists of France was
carried to work the mischief it intended for Ireland upon other Catholic
lands. It forced its tyranny very soon upon Italy, Spain, Portugal,
Switzerland, and the Rhenish provinces of Germany. That was bad enough,
but it was not all. When the French revolutionary armies had departed
from these countries, after the fall of Bonaparte, they left, a deadly
scourge that could not be removed, behind them. That was the system of
Atheistic organization of which we have been speaking, and which was not
slow in producing its malignant fruits.
In Catholic Italy, where the scourge of the Revolution fell most
heavily, the misfortune happened thus: The discontent consequent upon
the multitude of political parties in that country gave the secret
machinators of the Weishaupt school a splendid opportunity of again
renewing their intrigues; while the miserable Government of the Bourbons
in France, in permitting Freemasonry to flourish, afforded its supreme
direction an opportunity to assist them in many ways. Public opinion in
Germany was unripe for any Atheism unless veiled under the hypocritical
pretences of the Tugenbund. In Italy, however, though religion was
strong amongst all classes, the division of the country into small
principalities caused the hopes of the revolutionists to be more
sanguine than anywhere else, and the opportunity of dealing a blow at
the temporal power of the Pope under the national pretext of a united
Italy, was too great a temptation for the Supreme Masonic Directory to
resist. Besides, it could not be forgotten by them, that in making
past efforts the power of the Pope was the principal cause of their
many failures. They rightly judged that the complete destruction of his
temporal authority was essential to Atheism, and the first and most
necessary step to their ultimate views upon all Christianity, and for
the subjugation of the world to their sway. The temporal power was the
stronghold, the rallying point of every legitimate authority in Europe.
With a sure instinct of self-preservation, the Schismatical Lord of
Russia, the Evangelical King of Prussia, the Protestant Governments of
England, Denmark, and Sweden, as well as the ancient legitimate Catholic
dynasties of Portugal, Austria, Bavaria, and Spain had determined at
the Congress of Vienna on the restoration of the temporal dominions of
the Pope. The Conservatives of Europe, whether Catholic, Protestant,
or Schismatic, felt that while the States of the Church were preserved
intact to the Head of the Catholic religion, their own rights would
remain unquestioned—that to reach themselves his rights should be first
assailed. The Atheistic conspiracy, guided now by old, experienced
revolutionists, saw also that the conservatism of the world which they
had to destroy in order to dominate in its stead, could not be undermined
without first taking away the foundation of Christian civilization
upon which it rested, and which unquestionably, even for Christian
schismatics and heretics, was the temporal and the spiritual authority
of the Pope. Having no idea of a divine preservation of the Christian
religion, they judged that the destruction of the temporal power would
lead inevitably to the destruction of the spiritual; and as experience
proved that it would be useless to attempt to destroy both altogether,
they then set all their agencies at work to destroy the temporal power
first. They, therefore, determined to create and ferment to the utmost
extent a political discontent amongst the populations of the different
states into which the Italian Peninsula was divided. Now this was a
difficult task in the face of the experience which the Italian people had
gained of the revolutions and constant political changes brought by the
French from the first attempt of the Republic to the last of the Empire.
The Congress of Vienna restored most of the ancient Italian States as
well as the States of the Church to the legitimate rulers. Peace and
prosperity beyond what had been known for years began to reign in the
Peninsula. The people in mass were profoundly contented. They were more
Catholic than ever, notwithstanding all that the revolutionary agents
of France did to pervert them. But there remained a dangerous fraction
amidst the population not at all satisfied with the change which had so
much improved the nation generally. This fraction consisted of those
individuals and their children who benefitted by the revolutionary
régime. They were the men who made themselves deputies in Rome, Naples,
and elsewhere, and by the aid of French revolutionary bayonets seized
upon Church property and became enriched by public spoliation. These
still remained revolutionary to the core. Then, there was the interest
effected by their party. And finally, there was that uneasy class,
educated by the many cheap universities of the country in too great
number, the sons of advocates and other professional men, who, tinged
with liberalism, easily became the prey of the designing men who still
remained addicted to the principles and were leagued in the secret
organizations of Weishaupt and his fellow Atheists. Even one of these
youths corrupted and excited to ambition by the adroit manipulation of
these emissaries of Satan, still active, though more imperceptible than
ever, would be sufficient to kindle a flame amongst his fellows capable
of creating a wide discontent. Aided then by such elements, already at
hand for their purposes, Weishaupt and his hidden Directory determined
to kindle such a flame of Revolution in Italy, as in its effects should,
before long, do more harm to religion and order, than even the French
Revolution had caused in its sanguinary but brief career. They effected
this by the formation, on the darkest lines of “illuminated” Masonry, of
the terrible sect of—