Has Pope Francis Excommunicated Himself?

 

Traditionalist commentators are claiming that Pope Francis actually automatically excommunicated himself back in 1999—by accepting life membership in the Rotary Club.

That got my attention. The Rotary Club? Isn’t that about as pedestrian and suburban-respectable an organization as you can imagine? My own father and grandfather were lifetime members. Heck, my parish priest was a member.

And yet, it seems that, although “automatic excommunication” is over the top, it is true that Catholics are not supposed to belong to the Rotary Cub. In 1950, the Vatican and Pope Pius XII declared that no Catholic priest was permitted to join or attend meetings. Lay Catholics were not explicitly prohibited, but reminded to observe the canon law that tells them to “guard against associations which are secret, condemned, seditious, suspect, or which try to escape legitimate church vigilance." Implying that Rotary arguably fell into one of these categories. 

According to Time magazine the Vatican made clear that the concern applied only to Rotary, not to other similar voluntary associations. “In answer to newsmen's questions, the Vatican last week indicated that the ban did not apply specifically to such other groups as Kiwanis, Lions, and Elks.”

This ban must have been announced at just about the time my father joined Rotary. And he must have known about it. I have the article from Time magazine, and both my father and grandfather subscribed to Time. The matter must have been under general discussion within Rotary.  Montreal’s Archbishop Paul-Emile Léger, Time reports, publicly forbade any priests from participation in any form.

My grandfather might well have been unconcerned. He was a Protestant, and had been a Freemason. The family story is that he left the Freemasons at marriage in deference to his Catholic wife. 

Yet he kept his Mason’s apron; I saw it in his belongings after his death. And Masons showed up at his funeral, identifying him as a “brother in the craft.” Would they do so if he had not been active, and not paying his dues, for over thirty years? One wonders.

Is Rotary somehow related to the Masons? They deny it. So why did the Vatican oppose Rotary?

The Time article includes their explanation. “Sometimes [in Rotary] there is undue devotion to monopolistic capitalism, and monopoly is condemnable, on both Christian and social grounds, as an offence against charity. The fact that non-members of Rotary Clubs are sometimes excluded from the benefits which Providence meant for all men . . . amounts to a condemnable monopoly."

Rotary allows only one member of each trade or profession to join each local chapter. The idea behind the club is then that other members will patronize their fellow Rotarians for all their needs. This founding concept is enshrined in the name, “Rotary”: benefits passed around the circle, greasing the gears of trade. 

This is arguably a cartel operating against the public interest: “monopolistic capitalism.” A similar collusion among those in the same business would be restraint of trade.  

Although not mentioned in the papal prohibition, I had always thought there was something else wrong with Rotary; something that ties them more directly to the Freemasons. It is their code of ethics, the “four way test,” supposed to guide each Rotarian’s words:

“1. Is it the truth?

2. Is it fair to all concerned?

3. Will it build goodwill and better friendships?

4. Will it be beneficial to all concerned?”

This might sound good, but it actually suppresses truth. It is a disguised vow of secrecy, the core issue with Freemasonry as well.

Proper ethics should begin and end with item 1. Truth itself is a transcendent value, divine; the Truth shall set you free. The truth is always of the greatest benefit to all concerned. The need for three more tests beyond this implies it is not.

Truth should apparently be concealed if it is not going to win friends and “benefit all concerned,” presumably in their own estimation.

The story given within the club on the origin of the Four-Way Test is that, by adopting it, an early Rotarian turned a failing business around. 

This makes clear that “benefit” here is material, not spiritual, benefit.

This vow of silence could support any sort of sin or criminality. If much muted here, such vows of secrecy have been used in other organizations for nefarious purposes, often for discrimination. The Freemasons, who used to prohibit black membership. The Orange Order; their contributions to anti-Catholic violence in Ireland are well known. Into the Sixties, nobody had ever been elected mayor of Toronto without being a member. More obviously, perhaps, the Ku Klux Klan, the Cosa Nostra, the Mafia.

Given all this, and the fact that the 1951 condemnation of Rotary has never been rescinded, how is it that we now have clergy and even popes active in the club?

It might be that Rotary has shown itself less sinister over the years. Or it might be symptomatic of a decline in the clergy—which many would argue has been evident since about 1960. Taylor Marshall makes the case that the Church has been heavily infiltrated since then by secret organizations: the Freemasons, the KGB, the so-called “Velvet mafia,” homosexual and pedophile rings, and the “St. Galen mafia.”

It is attractive to narcissists to do something like this. They enjoy feeling they are putting something over on others. It makes them feel superior.