There is a criticism that repeatedly surfaces whenever Joseph de Maistre’s name enters serious Catholic intellectual circles: that he was a Freemason, and that this association permanently taints his counter-revolutionary credentials. It is the kind of charge that sounds devastating precisely because it contains a kernel of historical truth. It is also, when examined honestly, one of the most chronologically confused arguments in recent Catholic intellectual debate.>
Let us be direct about the facts. Maistre joined his first lodge in Chambéry in 1774 and maintained Masonic membership until around 1790, when the French Revolution was already dismantling everything he believed in. This is not in dispute. What is routinely omitted from the accusation is the context. Despite papal condemnation, these eighteenth-century clubs were routinely frequented by priests, bishops, and Catholic noblemen. Pre-revolutionary Freemasonry in Catholic Europe was largely a social institution for educated elites, bearing little resemblance to the militant anti-clerical force it became after 1789. Maistre’s early lodge membership was a commonplace of his class and time, not a confession of ideological hostility to the Church.>
The more important fact is what came next. After the French Revolution, commencing with his arrival in Russia in 1803 at the latest, he abandoned Freemasonry entirely. The break was real, documented, and permanent. It was in Russia that Maistre finally came to accept the theses of Abbé Barruel, who blamed Freemasonry for the Revolution, theses he had previously always refuted. In other words, not only did he leave Freemasonry behind, he eventually came to understand it as one of the instruments of the civilizational catastrophe he spent his mature life opposing.

Originally published in Integrity Magazine. Read original article

Original Tags: Church History, Catholic Social Teaching, Counter-Revolution, French Revolution, Joseph de Maistre, Liberalism