Friday 18 December 2015

THE NEW MASONIC INVENTION.

SPIRIT OF THE PRESS
(New York Tablet.)   

The latest device of the implacable enemy of religion, Freemasonry, to promote the cause of irreligion and impiety is what they call the League of Instruction (le Ligue d'enseignement), having its origin in France. Alas ! poor France, that such poisonous growths should spring from her soil, trodden of old by the feet of so many of God's saints! This League of Instruction is avowedly to defeat the action of the Church in regard to Christian education. It is precisely the same spirit that has given rise to this new organisation and the more desultory opposition of those who, in our own country, cry out against what they are pleased to call sectarian education ; but, whatever or whoever may be at the bottom of the movement, here, it has undeniably sprung in Europe—in France—from that inner circle of the Masonic Order which is the arch enemy of God and his Christ and of all religion, whatever the members of the outer rings, or lower grades, may say or even think to the contrary.
   This new French League professes, however to have nothing to do with either politics or religion, but that it is precisely the programme of Freemasonry itself—the programme intended for the eyes of the profane, the bait to catch the unwary and the unthinking. Founded, as the League ostensibly is, for the development and advancement of public instruction, it is altogether remarkable, in an age when the Church is fighting everywhere the battle of Christian education, that it should declare itself at the outset, and in Catholic France, as having nothing to do with religion. Is not that a very questionable sort of instruction for the young that excludes all religion from its programme? Is it not practical atheism, as one of our French contemporaries pertinently asks ? Yet it is the doctrine of all the different branches of the Revolution which, is convulsing the greater part of Europe, and spreading anarchy and social disorder from land to land as it goes on its ruinous march amongst the nations. Godless education is the lever by which the anti-Christian sect, in its secret machinations, hopes to rule the world and win mankind over to its impious and atheistical purpose, the dethronement of God from the sovereignty of the world His almighty power created, and the elevation of man's own will and intellect to the vacant seat of supreme authority. The power for evil of exclusively secular instruction and a rigorous banishment of God and religion from the school and the college, from all places of public instruction, is as well known to the enemies of God and religion as it is to the Church, on whose glorious banner Christian education is blazoned in the blood of a crucified Redeemer and any association, no matter where it originates or where it exists, that has for its object education without religion, is doing the work of the Evil One, the arch enemy of souls, by depriving the rising generation of a knowledge of God and our redemption through Christ, His Son.
 It would seem that this League has been some years in existent for so long ago as 1865 one of the Masonic organs of France announced that it was "about to make a final appeal for the establishment in that country of a League of Instruction similar to that established two years before in Belgium."
 The effect of this precious League is, alas but too visible in the trials and the afflictions that have befallen the Church in Belgium, as in every Catholic country where Freemasonry has got the upper hand.
 " The idea," said the Monde Maconnique, "originated with Brother Macé. He was the first to conceive and make it public ; he it was who rallied around him its first adherents, made the first appeals on its behalf, and defrayed himself all the first expenses of the undertaking." . . " The influence of Freemasonry on the success of the work founded by brother Macé," said the same journal, " will certainly be most efficacious and most decisive. The means of propagation at the disposal of the lodges, thanks to their special organisation, will be a powerful help; and, on the other hand, the principles of our association, identical with those which have been expressed"—those, namely, of the League of Instruction—" make it the duty of Freemasons to enrol themselves amongst supporters of the League of Instruction and to show themselves in the front rank of the indefatigable propagators and devoted soldiers of instruction in the coming struggle between the darkness of ages and accidental or systematic ignorance."
  The Freemasons were not slow in responding to this call ; they became, one and all, members of the new League. The work went bravely on. "We are happy to know," said the Monde Masonnique of April, 1867, " that Brother Macé's 'League of Instruction' and Voltaire's statue meet with the liveliest sympathy in all our lodges. No two objects can be more in harmony : Voltaire—that is to say, the destruction of prejudices and superstitions ; the league of instruction, which signifies the building up of a new society, based only on science and instruction. This all our brethren understand."             
A new society based only on science and instruction ! what instruction ? An instruction from which the author of nature, the foundation of all science, the Great First Cause, the Being of beings, is excluded ! Oh! the perversity, the blindness, of man when abandoned to his own reprobate sense and the promptings of that dark spirit who was a liar and a murderer from the beginning—yea, the murderer of souls whom an Incarnate God died in vain to save !—a society based on science and instruction, such as the eulogists and avowed disciples of Voltaire may see fit to give. What a society ! What a prospect for the new age !

Advocate 22 May 1875

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