The Presence and Activity of Freemasonry in the Orthodox East

The Very Reverend Father Dr. George Metallinos

 

 

The author of the following article is former Dean and Professor Emeritus of the School of Theology of the University of Athens. He is also a past recipient of the Florovsky Theological Prize, awarded by the Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies. We are pleased to present his informative and insightful article on the influence of the Masonic movement on the cultural and religious life of Greece. In the United States, especially, where the movement is known at a popular level for its charitable activities as a benign fraternal organization and where its role as a political force in the American Revolution and the thinking of some significant figures among the nation’s Founding Fathers is largely forgotten, Father Metallinos’ remarks may seem strange, if not provocative. However, in a firm but balanced manner, he clearly puts forth the Church’s position on the impossibility of fidelity to the Faith and membership in the Masonic movement. He also makes a compelling case for the fundamental incompatibility of Masonry with the teachings of Christianity, its relationship with occult and pagan religions and nefarious forces and ideologies, and its acknowledged hostility to its theology and soteriology.

 

Masonry is an invasive organism within Greek society, which feeds parasitically on the body politic, with grievous consequences for its cohesion and character.

More importantly, Freemasonry is the offspring of foreign parturition, is completely alien to the character of our nation, and is, indeed, essentially irreconcilable therewith.

Thus, it is causing the ideological dismemberment of Greek society, primarily in its “higher” social strata, contributing to the perpetuation and deepening of our ideological disunity.

Its activity (since the eighteenth century) in our geographical locale has confirmed that Freemasonry is identical to occultism and its sinister workings, something embodied in a disparaging expression familiar in the Ionian islands: “Just like a Mason”!

Greek Freemasonry is of English provenance. The British branch of the movement, wherever it was operative, dedicated itself to founding (English) Masonic lodges. This “missionary” enterprise was an essential factor in the furtherance of British foreign policy.

Archival data, and especially the Archives of the Colonial Office for the Heptanese (Ionian Islands) (1814-1864), belie assertions to the contrary by Freemasons in our own country.

The first lodge in the Orthodox East was established in Smyrna, with the prominent Freemason Alexander Drummond as the prime mover in this endeavor. [1]

From Smyrna, lodges spread to Constantinople, with the founding of a lodge there in 1748.

The European cultural milieu and the cosmopolitan make-up of the population favored the introduction of new ideas, which went in tandem with the undermining of the Christian Faith and its connection with Orthodox tradition.

It is, consequently, not surprising that Freemasons occupied positions both in the Phanar and in the (Ecumenical Patriarchate as far back as 1755.

By the end of the eighteenth century, moreover, lodges had been established in Athens, Zagora, Ampelakia, Ioannina, and the Ionian islands (the first “apologist” for Freemasonry was the clergyman Antonios Katephoros, in Zakynthos [2]).

Freemasonry was supported chiefly by the bourgeoisie, and enjoyed wide circulation among savants, merchants, and Phanariots.

The Greek-speaking element of the Orthodox Church took a stand early on against Freemasonry and the threat that it posed for the Greek Orthodox Tradition, which it subverts by its mere presence.

The first theoretical condemnation of Freemasonry in the domain of the (Ecumenical Patriarchate occurred almost at the same time as the founding of its lodges.

An Athonite manuscript attests to the promulgation of a synodal letter of condemnation in 1745, which denounced Freemasons as “Godless,” in the familiar sense in which this word is used in the New Testament, [3] that is, as denying the only true God, in the Person of Jesus Christ.

Furthermore, the Patriarchal excommunication of 1793 (under Neophytos VII) cited “Voltaire, Freemasons, Rousseau, and Spinoza,” namely, the architects of the French Revolution. [4]

It should be emphasized, here, that Freemasonry and its infiltration into the sphere of the Rum Millet influenced the attitude of the latter towards the French Revolution and its ideals. Moreover, Napoleon and his brothers were noted Freemasons.

According to Steven Runciman, an expert on such matters, “the ideas of eighteenth-century Freemasonry were hostile to the old established Churches. There were even a few Greek ecclesiastics among the Masons; but the effect of the movement was to weaken the influence of the Orthodox Church.” [5]

I recently published, together with the superb philologist and doctoral candidate Charalambos Menaoglou, a work from 1782 by Agapios Kolybas Papantonatos, entitled Ανατροπή τής Φραγμαοωνικής Πίοτεως (Refutation of the Franco-masonic faith). [6] This massive work evinces a sophisticated and well-documented knowledge of Freemasonry, treating it as a religion, and one destructive of Orthodoxy and of Christianity in general.

In the nineteenth century, Freemasonry, its philosophy and its aims, as well as its methods, became more evident in the English-controlled Heptanese.

In 1839, the then Superintendent (1837-1839) of the Ionian Academy and Professor of Theology, Hieromonk Konstantinos Typaldos-Iakobatos (1795-1867), later the first Principal (Σχολάρχης) of the Theological School of Halke ((Ecumenical Patriarchate), composed a lengthy refutation of Freemasonry (as yet unpublished, but presented in a scientific manner).

The anti-Masonic activities of Kosmas Phlamiatos (1786-1852) [7] and Apostolos Makrakes (1831-1905) [8] are also well known, as are the works of Professor Panagiotes Trembelas, [9] Father Epiphanios Theodoropoulos, [10] Nikos Psaroudakes, [11] Kostas Tsarouchas, [12] Basilios Lambropoulos, [13] N. Philippopoulos, and others.

The Church of Greece, through its widely published Encyclical of 1933, in which it follows the appraisal submitted by the Theological School of the University of Athens, has maintained a clear and strong stand against Freemasonry.

Basing itself on texts from the Orthodox tradition and on books about Freemasonry, and echoing the opinion of the Inter-Orthodox Commission (Holy Mountain, 1930), it “condemns” Freemasonry, as it also later did in other statements in 1972,1984, and 1996.

As far back as 1933, the Holy Synod characterized Freemasonry as a religion, emphasizing the dangers that it posed:

Freemasonry is not simply a charitable association or a philosophical school, but constitutes a mystagogical system reminiscent of the ancient pagan mystery religions or cults, from which it is descended and of which it is a continuation and a revival. Prominent teachers in their lodges not only admit this, but even take pride in proclaiming it... [14]

The Encyclical concludes: “Thus, Freemasonry is demonstrably a mystery religion, entirely different from, separate from, and foreign to the Christian Faith.” [15]

Of course, Freemasons officially deny these points; however, in so doing, they disagree with their own texts and with the pronouncements of well-known Freemasons at different times.

In addition, the Inter-Orthodox Commission of 1930 characterized Freemasonry as “an anti-Christian and erroneous system.” [16]

In other words, there is an uninterrupted continuity in our Church’s understanding of, and attitude towards, Freemasonry.

In 1782, Agapios Papantonatos stated: “Of all the false religions that have existed from the dawn of time to the present day, the Masonic faith is the most impious and the most detrimental to the human race.”

His conclusion is that Freemasonry is anti-Christian and a complete subversion of Christianity.

Freemasonry, by virtue of its syncretistic nature (“all from the same pot”), functions as a super-religion (its supreme deity being the “Great Architect of the Universe”), which swallows up the different religions, no matter how much it may profess that it does not impinge on them.

Orthodox Christians, in particular, cannot have anything to do with Freemasonry, since it places Christ on the same level as various “initiates,” crudely denying the soteriological uniqueness and exclusivity [17] of the only True God, Jesus Christ, Who alone can guide us to deification qua union with Him. For Christ, as God-Man, gives to man that which He possesses, namely Divinity, His uncreated and deifying Grace.

By contrast, Christ is described by a prominent Freemason (Bratsanos) as “the great Nazarene Initiate.” In his book To Βιβλίο τοϋ Μαθητοϋ (The book of the disciple) he states: “Today’s Freemason knows well that his initiation into the Masonic mysteries makes him a Mason on a par with Poseidon, Apollo, Amphion, and Christ”!

The assertion by Greek Freemasons, therefore, that they (supposedly) remain faithful Orthodox Christians shows either that they are ignorant of Christianity as a whole or that they are deceivers. Tertium non datur.

For this reason, there is a perpetual incompatibility between being a Freemason and being an (Orthodox) Christian, according to the proclamations of the Holy Synod, which were reaffirmed by the late Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens in 1998, in an encyclical entitled “Γιατί δέν μπορεί νά είμαι μασώνος· Ώς Έλλην καί ’Ορθόδοξος Χριστιανός δέν μπορεί νά άνήκω στην Μασονία” (Why I Cannot Be a Freemason: As a Greek and an Orthodox Christian I Cannot Belong to Freemasonry).

In this document he sets forth ten points, which justify his abhorrence of Freemasonry. In point 10 he writes, by way of conclusion:

Freemasonry, according to our Church, is an anti-Christian and erroneous system, and for this reason being a Freemason is incompatible with being a Christian. The faithful ought to refrain from Freemasonry, and all who have been led astray are called to repent and return to the bosom of our Orthodox Church.

In the final sentence of the document he says: “If I become a Freemason, I must cease to be Orthodox and Greek”!

Consequently, it will entail no problem if the Hierarchy acts to reiterate yet again its earlier declarations concerning Freemasonry.

 

Greek source: Κοσμάς Φλαμιάτος, Vol. VII (March-April 2011), pp. 51-53. The text is taken from the following book by Protopresbyter George D. Metallinos, Professor Emeritus at the University of Athens, Μαρτυρίες για θέματα πνευματικά και κοινωνικά (Testimonies on spiritual and social issues) (Thessalonike: Ekdoseis “Orthodoxos Kypsele,” 2011), pp. 53-58.

 

NOTES

1. Alexander Drummond, Travels Through Different Cities of Germany, Italy, Greece (London: 1754), p. 120. Drummond (+ 1769), an English diplomat, served as “His Majesty’s Consul” in Aleppo, Syria, from 1754-1756.

2. Ironically enough, κατήφορος in Modem Greek means, inter alia, “downhill.” Thus, this clergyman’s surname somehow betokens the spiritual fall that he and those of like mind would suffer as a result of their involvement with Freemasonry—trans.

3. Ephesians 2:12.

4. Manouel I. Gedeon (ed.), Κανονικοί Διατάξεις των Άγιωτάτων Πατριάρχων Κωνσταντινουπόλεως (Canonical decrees of the Most Holy Patriarchs of Constantinople), Vol. I (Constantinople: Ek tou Patriarchikou Typographeiou, 1888), p. 281.

5. The Great Church in Captivity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 392.

6. Hieromonk Agapios Kolybas Papantonatos, Ανατροπή τής Φραγμασωνικής Πίστεως, ed. Father George Metallinos and Charalambos Menaoglou (Κατά Μασώνων, Vol. i; Trikala and Athens: Protypes Thessalikes Ekdoseis, 2007).

7. According to Nikolaos Bougatsos, Phlamiatos saw in the policies of the English occupiers of the Ionian Islands a clear attempt to undermine the Orthodox Church, to which attempt Freemasons contributed through their influence on the ecclesiastical policies of the Greek state and the Ottoman Empire (“Κοσμάς Φλαμιατος,” in Θρησκευτική και Ηθική Εγκυκλοπαίδεια, Vol. XI [Athens: 1967], col. 1175).

8. See Ό έν Έλλάδι Ελεύθερος Τεκτονισμός εν Όρισμφ και έν Συγκρίσει προς τον έν Έλλάδι ’Ορθόδοξον Χριστιανισμόν (Freemasonry in Greece Defined and Compared with Orthodox Christianity in Greece) (Athens: Typographeion A. Kallarakes, 1899).

9. See Μασσωνισμός (Freemasonry) (Athens: 1970).

10. See Ή Μασονία υπό το φως τής άληθείας (Freemasonry in the Light of the Truth) (Athens: Ekdoseis “Patmos,” 1965).

11. See Μασονία (Freemasonry) (Athens: Ekdoseis “Orthodoxo Metopo,” 1991).

12. See Ή Μασονία στήν Ελλάδα (Freemasonry in Greece) (Athens: Ekdoseis “Hellenika Grammata,” 2004).

13. See To μαϋρο Λεξικό τής Μασονίας (The Black Dictionary of Freemasonry) (Athens: 2001).

14. Εκκλησία, No. 48 (December 4, 1933), p. 1.

15. Ibid.

16. Πρακτικά τής Προκαταρκτικής Επιτροπής των Άγιων ’Ορθοδόξων Εκκλησιών τής συνελθούσης έν τή έν Άγίφ ’Όρει Τερςί Μεγίστη Μονή τοϋ Βατοπεδίου (8-23 ’Ιουνίου 1930) (Proceedings of the Preparatory Commission of the Holy Orthodox Churches, Which Convened at the Holy and Great Monastery of Vatopedi [June 8-23,1930]) (Constantinople: Typois “Phazilet” Tassou Bakalopoulou, 1930), pp. 127-128.

17. Acts 4:12.

 

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XXXI (2014), No. 1, pp. 35-40.