Deeply Suspicious. (Image credit: Dartmouth College.)

How to Recognize a Freemason

I think my search for crank-free Tridentine parishes here in Rome has finally succeeded. The two masses I have been to at San Gregorio and at Gesù e Maria have been quietly beautiful, reverent and, most importantly, free of weird politico-ecclesiastical posturing by either the celebrant or his parishioners. Plus, I'm not the only person there in a tie.

This is not to say my search hasn't had a few setbacks.

For example, I went to a Requiem mass on Saturday morning and instead ended up striking a blow against the dark and nefarious embrace of International Freemasonry. Which entailed sweating in the sun under the Porta Pia monument for near over an hour while unemployed geriatric Roman aristocrats shouted indecypherable Italian slogans at me through megaphones.

Yes, this is going to take some explaining. Not just to you, but mostly to me. I still have no clue what the heck just went by me.

I didn't plan it this way. It all began with the Tridentine Requiem I heard at the church of Corpus Domini on the Via Nomentana this morning. It was amazing. There was a palpable visual shock as he entered from the sacristy, flanked by his attendants, all in stark black and white. The priest, the Uruguayan Fr. I., was dressed in the silver-trimmed mourning vestments of the old rite, while his servers wore sober cassock and surplice. Even his usual quick Latin prayers were slowed by the solemnity and sadness of the occasion, resonating in the eerie echo of the neo-Gothic sanctuary as a chant schola intoned the age-old Dies Irae. Sublime.

The mass was said for the repose of the souls of the Papal troops and their adversaries slain at the battle of Porta Pia in 1870, when Garibaldi's soldiers stormed the Eternal City and left Pius IX a self-proclaimed prisoner in the Vatican. This strange echo of the past gave the whole Requiem a weird poignancy, tragic and sad. Soon, however, the sublime became ridiculous.

Like everything in Italy, tragedy is not so far from comedy. So, things started getting weird in short order. The homily seemed encouragingly non-political enough, something something culture of Death, something something Giovanni Paolo, something something Ratzinger. Fr. I. told me afterwards it was about the European Union, which means I have to practice my Italian. That being said, while I'm no big fan of the E.U., it seems slightly odd as a sermon topic at the memorial of slain heroes.

It gets better.

There was going to be a wreath-laying ceremony at the Porta Pia monument afterwards , and while hesitant, the tourist in me I decided to tag along. Then the fun began. The first sign of weirdness ahead was the tubby gentleman at the head of the procession with the St. Michael tee shirt waving a gonfalon with the words Vive le Christ-Roi, Roi de Canada, hardly strange but highly incongruous in the midday heat.

I wasn't sure it was any of my business, knowing the sort of monarchist craziness that occasionally rears its hoary head in traditionalist circles, and stayed on the periphery of the crowd with an elderly English-speaking woman I recognized from my visit to that parish in Trastevere. I figured if I ran into any loopiness at the least it might have comic-relief potential. Surprise, surprise.

The twenty or so people who had formed the congregation made their way towards the column and soon became a tourist attraction for some highly amused carabineri on duty near the cenotaph. Fr. I. blessed the wreath with a screwtop aspergillum, and turned the floor and the megaphone over to a cadaverous gentleman in a bad suit.

I later found out he was Prince Ruspoli, though I'm not sure why that means anything. Perhaps if he was a Farnese or Spada, I'd think different, but his name sounds more like a flavor of ice-cream than a papal nobleman. He wound up his mumbled speech on the battle of Porta Pia with the faintly anachronistic slogan "Vivan i stati pontifici, viva il Papa-Re." Huh. "Long live the Pope-King." I realized right now I was on a rather different planet than I expected. Not a bad thing, but just...well..weird, given all these resentments between Italy and the Holy See got sewn up decades ago at the Lateran Accords.

The slogan got a few lapsidaisical cheers from the small crowd. I wondered if I could sneak out without the old lady noticing, but, while being on the edge of the crowd, it was still a small crowd and I didn’t want to be rude. It was getting hot and I was losing interest.

Then the Prince's brother, who seemed to have inherited the snappy-dresser genes, took over the bullhorn and proceeded to go at it for at least forty-five minutes. I soon realized this was too crazy to miss, given the puzzled, incompetently stoic, or incredibly bored looks he was getting from his audience. Even Fr. I., who had been standing for two hours straight between the Requiem and this miniscule funeral rite-turned-rally, winced a little and seemed to be having trouble keeping his eyes open.

I wish I could tell you what he was talking about, but it looked like there wasn't anything he didn’t talk about. Well, th central theme was obvious, though. Those pesky Masons, you know, scourge of Europe. Who, between you, me and the wall, frankly haven't packed a punch since the French Revolution, but don't tell him that. The word Masoneria popped up about once every three sentences, and there were, as far as I could tell, paranoid rantings against one-world government, the European Union, something about the pure monastic democracy of Mount Athos, Italo-American gibberish like gangsterismo and possibly Jacques Chirac. Maybe Masons in the European Union are threatening to take over Mount Athos using Luigi "the Shoulder" Vanvitelli and turn it into a vacation home for French mimes. I got the impression everyone else around me was just as confused.

The deceased Papal troops themselves had vanished in this conspiratorial mess.

I'll get into this more below, but, while as a Catholic I have my theological difficulties with the rich old guys in rolled-up trousers who have persecuted the Church in the past, I rather doubt they're out to kidnap me and force me to watch My Mother the Car as part of some nefarious plot to destroy the Vatican. There's already one of those plots, and it's called Popular Culture, and it's bad enough without dragging in a secret society out of a detective novel.

Eventually, the still-dazed Fr. I said another prayer (through the bullhorn), flipped his stole around so the white bit faced outward, and solemnly blessed us, at which we all knelt. And thus it ended, a whole half hour behind schedule.

The old woman gave me the gist of the speech over a sausage panino at a cafe across the street. It only further confused things, really. She told me what I knew already, Garibaldi's seizure of the Papal States, the death of the Papal soldiers, and so on. But she also said that today was a big holiday for the Pope's adversaries, whoever they were, which she didn't elaborate. She explained some sketchy ideas of Not-the-Prince's about low interest rates which were completely lost on me. When we popped outside, she finally gave me the name of these unknown enemies.

She was talking about…(dramatic chord)…the Masons. Well, of course, given that speech I heard. Strange to get all secretive about it with Not-the-Prince shouting it from the rooftops.

I had to see what would come out of her mouth next so I continued around the block with her, wondering bemusedly if the window cleaners were listening in on us. She'd already been concerned the bartender had been listening in. I would be too, but only because this was all hilariously embarassing. Of course, the street was full of plenty of potential Lodge spies cunning disguised as pedestrians, but that didn’t seem to enter into the poor woman’s head. If the Papa-Re thing had left me somewhat confused, I was now in the Bizarro universe.

I made a mental note to avoid Fr. I’s parish because, well, I live in the real world and not in a particularly convoluted episode of the X-Files. Most of the time, at least.

It got yet stranger. The folks intent on taking over the world, the folks behind all this, the old woman explained, were not pure Masons, of course, but they're in league with Communists, the guys who put eyes and pyramids on dollar bills, and some of your typical conspiratorial financiers (gangsterismo?). Uh huh. Whatever you say, ma'am. Being somone who's read Umberto Eco's satirical conspiracy-theory novel, Foucault’s Pendulum, at least twice, I knew the script. The late Madame Blavatsky showed up in the next few minutes like clockwork as one of the conspirators, as did the incompetent, petty but hardly scary European Union, the Founding Fathers, one-world government, and what was probably that strange little French village Rennes-le-Chateau. I could just see the Holy Grail heaving into sight on the horizon. Jeez.

That's my cue to leave, I thought. I thanked this most peculiar woman for her insight, and decided to excuse myself before the Knights Templar (incognito as Trilateral Commissioners) showed up in a black helicopted piloted by Elvis and Salman Rushdie.

It's comical, in a weird sort of way, but also sad and pitiable. The Tridentine mass has a place in the Church as worship, not as a vehicle for political paranoia. Masonry was a threat to the Church once, but right now a bunch of old men in funny aprons are the least of our worries. Maybe it’s different in Italy. The notorious P-2 Masonic Lodge scandal happened only about two decades ago. And then, walking back, I saw an enormous anticlerical poster on the city gate proclaiming NO VATICAN, NO TALIBAN which made my blood run cold. Dear God. The work of the Masons? No--not now. I can't joke about something like that.

Whatever the case, the Church’s problems won't be solved by blaming them on once-powerful, now illustory cabals.

I had a troubling if quiet walk back past Santa Maria della Vittoria, which was, of course, closed. Nobody followed or anything, though I imagine the Masons you don't see are the problem. It was all too much to take; too completely, monumentally absurd, that people could take this sort of fear-mongering seriously. I found my way along Via XX Settembre past the Presidential Palace and finally, atop the Quirinal hill, beheld the whole city at my feet. The great bulbous dome of St. Peter’s in the blue distance came as a splendid breath of fresh air, and I laughed. It felt very good.