Former US President Joe Biden, a self-professed Catholic, has joined an African-American Masonic lodge as a ‘Master Mason’. The Vatican takes a dim view of Freemasonry, and Catholics who join the fraternal order face excommunication.
Biden was inducted into the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge in South Carolina on Sunday, one day before he left office. In a private ceremony, the lodge’s grand master, Victor C. Major, granted Biden “Master Mason membership with full honors,” according to a statement published by the organization last weekend that circulated online on Friday.
“To be a Freemason is to be part of a brotherhood dedicated to personal growth, service to others, and the pursuit of knowledge and truth,” the lodge wrote. Biden’s service, the statement added, “reflects the core values” of this brotherhood.
Although its origins stretch back to the 15th century, modern Freemasonry developed in Britain in the early 1700s and quickly grew into a Europe- and US-wide fraternity for philosophers, religious dissidents, occultists, and the business and political elite. Some 14 US presidents, including George Washington, were Freemasons.
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Prince Hall Masonry is a historically black sect of Freemasonry founded in 1775 by a freed slave in Boston.
Biden has not publicly acknowledged joining the ranks of the Prince Hall Masons. However, his membership in the organization stands at odds with his Catholic faith.
Pope Clement XII forbade Catholics from practicing Freemasonry in 1738, and this papal ban remained in place until 1983, when the Vatican issued a new order banning membership in organizations that “plot against the Church.” While the new order did not explicitly name Freemasonry, it maintained excommunication as a potential punishment for Catholics who join such organizations.
“The faithful who enroll in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion,” Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would go on to become Pope, declared at the time.
Throughout his political life, Biden has sometimes embraced political positions that contradict his faith. Back in 2021, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops drafted a document that would have forbidden Biden from receiving Holy Communion over his pro-abortion views. After Pope Francis declared Biden a “good Catholic,” and said that he should continue receiving Communion, the document was revised to state that Catholic politicians have a “special responsibility to embody Church teaching in their service of the common good.”
