VIENNA (ChurchMilitant.com) - Eight popes over 200 years in a barrage of 20 legal interdicts have condemned Freemasonry, pronouncing automatic excommunication against any Catholic who becomes a member of a masonic lodge.
Now, a new book by an official of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue is claiming that a practicing Catholic can simultaneously be a Freemason and that the penalty of excommunication may "certainly not" be applied to "Catholic Freemasons."
Father Michael Heinrich Weninger launched his 500-page study Loge und Altar: Über die Aussöhnung von Katholischer Kirche und regulärer Freimaurerei (Lodge and Altar: On the Reconciliation of the Catholic Church and Regular Freemasonry) last Wednesday in Vienna, accompanied by Austrian Lodge Grand Master Georg Semler on the dais.
Semler identifies as a "committed Catholic," while Weninger, ordained by Cdl. Christoph Schönborn in 2011, was outed as a Freemason when celebrating Mass at the consecration of the new lodge of Mark Master Masons No. 1954 in 2014.
A masonic communiqué informed its members that "Bro. Rev. Michael was installed and invested as Chaplain in each of the three lodges," adding that Weninger was "well qualified since he lives in the Vatican as a member of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue but works in Rome."
Weninger says he has presented copies of his book to Pope Francis, to Schönborn and to high-ranking officials in the Roman Curia. Schönborn responded with "Nothing but goodwill," he bragged.
However, at a presser in 2013, Pope Francis lashed out at "a lobby of masons" while on a 2015 visit to Turin, the pontiff spoke of "worst conditions" for young people at the end of the 19th century when "Freemasonry was in full swing ... there were priest haters, there were also Satanists." In 2017, the pontiff compelled Cdl. Burke to purge Freemasons from the Knights of Malta. (more...)
And stunning silence after, almost as if this man never existed.
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