Would You Join a Masonic Lodge?

[dekeguy]

Originally Posted by Drolefille

I had this long typed up thing, but basically this : http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/freemasonry.htm
Approved by the Pope, issued by Ratzinger. I found no documentation of JPII saying anything else unless you include those world conspiracy sites that say the Pope IS a Mason which strikes me as just a wee little bit unlikely. So I don't believe that there were comments by JPII to contradict Ratzinger's (again, papally approved) document. And that document was only clarification that the same rules still apply.

Being a Mason as a Roman Catholic is being in a state of sin and one should not receive Holy Communion. (Not personal, dekeguy)

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My concerns stem from the date of Cardinal Ratzinger's (as he was then known) document (1983) and my conversation with the late Cardinal Basil Hume in the mid-1990s. I fully support the Church's position that a Catholic should not join in anti-religious or athestic groups who work against belief in God. I am a convinced Roman Catholic, I am also a Jesuit educated Roman Catholic and the Jesuits constantly posed the rhetorical question "when God gave you a brain, do you suppose He had in mind that you do something with it"? When faced with a complicated question we were taught to think it through to its conclusion. It seems to me that guidance, received years after the date of the document in question, from a brilliant, superbly educated, and deeply devout Cardinal Archbishop who was a close personal friend of our late Pope John Paul II, would speak to me with very considerable authority. I think that perhaps there is something of a comparison of apples and oranges involved here. My understanding is that the Pope was, and rightly so, dead set against involvement with irregular (outlaw, for want of a better word) so-called masonic organizations. My understanding is that regular Masons, which include all those recognized by the United Grand Lodge of England and Wales, do not fit the definition of those prohibited groups. Regular Masons are in complete agreement with the Church's objections against these athestic and/or antireligeous groups and likewise forbid communication with any of these irregular bodies on pain of expulsion from regular Masonry.
Any other Masons, Catholics, and/or Catholic Masons have any thoughts or helpful comments?