Note 100 — THE WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH AND CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. (continued 2)

[21] The late celebrated Monsignor Dupanloup published, in 1875, an invaluable little treatise, in which he gave, from the expressions of the most eminent Masons in France and elsewhere, from the resolutions taken in principal lodges, and from the opinions of their chief literary organs, proofs that what is here stated is correct. The following extracts regarding education will show what Masonry has been doing in regard to that most vital question. Monsignor Dupanloup says:—“In the great lodge called the ‘Rose of Perfect Silence,’ it was proposed at one time for the consideration of the brethren:—‘Ought religious education be suppressed?’ This was answered as follows:—‘Without any doubt the principle of supernatural authority, that is faith in God, takes from a man his dignity; is useless for the discipline of children, and there is also in it, the danger of the abandonment of all morality’.... ‘The respect, specially due to the child, prohibits the teaching to him of doctrines, which disturb his reason.’”

To show the reason of the activity of the Masons, all the world over, for the diffusion of irreligious education, it will be sufficient to quote the view of the the Monde Maçonnique on the subject. It says, in its issue of May 1st, 1865, “An immense field is open to our activity. Ignorance and superstition weigh upon the world. Let us seek to create schools, professorial chairs, libraries.” Impelled by the general movement thus infused into the body, the Masonic (French) Convention of 1870, came unanimously to the following decision:— “The Masonry of France associates itself to the forces at work in the country to render education gratuitous, obligatory, and laic.”

We have all heard how far Belgium has gone in pursuit of these Masonic aims at Infidel education. At one of the principal festivals of the Belgian Freemasons a certain brother Boulard exclaimed, amidst universal applause, “When ministers shall come to announce to the country that they intend to regulate the education of the people I will cry aloud, ‘to me a Mason, to me alone the question of education must be left; to me the teaching; to me the examination; to me the solution.’”

Monsgr. Dupanloup also attacked the Masonic project of having professional schools for young girls, such as are now advocated in the Australian colonies and elsewhere in English-speaking countries. At the time, the movement was but just being initiated in France, but it could not deceive him. In a pamphlet, to which all the Bishops of France adhered, and which was therefore called the Alarm of the Episcopate, he showed clearly that these schools had two faces:—on one of which was written “Professional Instruction for Girls,” and on the other, “Away with Christianity in life and death.” “Without woman,” said Brother Albert Leroy, at an International Congress of Masons, at Paris, in 1867, “all the men united can do nothing”—nothing to effectually de-Christianize the world.

The French “Education League” had the same object. At the time it was introduced, the lodges were busy with getting up a statue to Voltaire. And the Monde Maçonnique, speaking of both, said in April, 1867:—

“May the Education League and the statue of Brother Voltaire find in all the lodges the most lively sympathy. We could not have two subscriptions more in harmony: Voltaire, that is the destruction of prejudices and superstitions: the Education League, that is the building up of a new society founded solely upon science and upon instruction. All our brethren understand the matter in this manner.”

It is needless to remark here that by “superstition” the Monde Maçonnique means religion, and, by “science and instruction,” these acquirements, not only without, but directly hostile to religion. This newspaper constantly teaches that all religions are so many darknesses, that Masonry is the light; that God, the soul, the life to come, are nothing but suppositions and fantasies, and that, as a consequence, a man ought to be reared up independent of every kind of Christianity. Therefore, it adds, “All masons ought to adhere in mass to the league of instruction, and the lodges ought to study in the peace of their temples the best means to render it efficacious.” In fact the Education League and Masonry are declared to be identical by Brother Mace, who, at a general banquet, drank:—“To the entrance of all Masons into the League. To the entrance into Masonry of all those who form part of the League.” “To the triumph of the light, the watchword common to the League and to Masonry.”

In fine, the author of a history of Freemasonry, and one evidently well up in its aims, Brother Goffin, writes as follows:—

“Whenever Masonry accords the entrance into its temple to a Hebrew, to a Mahometan, to a Catholic, or to a Protestant, that is done on the condition that he becomes a new man, that he abjures all his past errors, that he rejects the superstitions in which he was cradled from his youth. Without all this what has he to do in our Masonic assemblies?”

But as we have seen the great aim of the Alta Vendita, was to corrupt woman. “As we cannot suppress her,” said Vindex to Nubius, “let us corrupt her with the Church.” The method best adapted for this was to alienate her from religion by an infidel education. The Freemasons, no doubt, obtained from the higher grades the word of command, and, accordingly, proceeded to force, everywhere, the establishment of superior schools for young girls where they might be surely deprived of their religion and their morality. In the “Lodge of Beneficence and Progress,” at Boulogne, on the 19th of July, 1867, “Massol” thus spoke: “By means of instruction, women will become able to shake off the clerical yoke, and to liberate themselves from the superstitions which impede them from occupying themselves with an education in harmony with the spirit of the age.” To give one proof only of this, where is the English, German, or American woman, who to the two religious questions which her own children can propose to her: “Who made the world?” “Do we continue to live after death?” would dare to answer that she knew nothing and that no one knew anything about it. Well, then, this boldness the instructed French woman will possess.