Note 36 — THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XXII., No. 128.—NOVEMBER, 1875.

Before we proceed to expose the even yet more hideous loathsomeness of this vile association, a few words of explanation are necessary. In all we write we have in view an organization—its constitution and motives—and that only. The individual responsibility of its several members is a matter for their own conscience; it is no affair of ours. We believe that the bulk of the association, all up to the thirtieth degree, or “Knights of the White Eagle,” or “Kadosch,” are in complete ignorance of the hellish criminality of its objects. Even the Rosicrucian has something to learn; although to have become that he must have stamped himself with the mark of Antichrist by the abandonment of his belief in Christ and in all revealed religion. But the vast majority, whose numbers, influence, and respectability the dark leaders use for the furtherance of their monstrous designs, live and die in complete ignorance of the real objects and principles of the craft. We ourselves know an instance of an individual, now reconciled to the church, who was once a Master Mason, and who to this moment is in utter ignorance of them. They are sedulously concealed from all who have not dispossessed themselves of the “prejudices of religion and morality.” The author of the work to which we are indebted for almost all our documentary evidence mentions the case of one who had advanced to the high grade of Rosicrucian, but who, not until he was initiated into the grade of Kadosch, was completely stunned and horrified by the demoniacal disclosures poured into his ears. Most of the Freemasons, however, have joined the body as a mere philanthropic institution, or on the lower motive of self-interest. Nor is it possible to convince these people of the fearful consequences to which they are contributing. Of course, but few of these, it is to be hoped, are involved in the full guilt of the “craft.” Every Catholic who belongs to it is in mortal sin. For the rest, we cannot but hope and believe that an overwhelming majority are innocent of any sinister motives. But it is impossible to exonerate them entirely. For, first, the “craft” is now pursuing its operations with such unblushing effrontery that it is difficult for any but illiterate people to plead entire ignorance; and next, no one can, without moral guilt, bind himself by terrible oaths, for the breaking of which he consents to be assassinated, to keep inviolable secrets with the nature of which he is previously unacquainted. It cannot but be to his everlasting peril that any one permits himself to be branded with this “mark of the beast.”