Masonic lodges, ashrams, XXX clubs: What’s a ‘sordid’ use for a former church?

Analysis

When St. Mary Presentation Catholic Parish in the eastern Washington town of Deer Park outgrew its parish church building, local Catholics knew it was time to build a bigger church.

Meeting hall of the Boyer Mountain Masonic Lodge #134, in a renovated former parish church. The Masonic symbol stands where there had been a high altar. Credit: Boyer Mountain Masonic Lodge #134/Facebook.

The parish raised money, even got some grant funds, and put up a beautiful building on the outskirts of town, along a stretch of road flanked by tall pines and wide open blue skies.

That meant the parish would need to close its old church building on Deer Park’s main street, and put it up for sale. 

And on June 16, 2011, St. Mary Presentation Parish sold its former church building to the Boyer Mountain Masonic Lodge #134, the local chapter of the Freemasons.

The crosses came out of the former church, the pews came down, and Masonic symbols went up where the high altar once had stood. The church became a hall, used for Lodge fundraisers and charity events, rented out for parties, and host to the rituals and ceremonies in which men become Freemasons, seeking “new birth” by asking for the “withdrawal of the veil which conceals divine truth from [their] uninitiated sight.”

When a church building can no longer be used for sacred worship, canon law allows it to be deconsecrated — relegated, in canonical language, to “profane use” — a technical term meaning secular. 

Deconsecrated churches are sometimes repurposed for Catholic apostolates — renovated into lecture halls, food banks, or even shelters. They are more often sold to buyers intent on a secular use of the space, planning to turn old churches into condos or restaurants.

But the Church does not permit that former churches ever be put to “sordid use.” The phrase is another technical term, which denotes some sacrilegious, immoral, or scandalous purpose. 

The idea is that a space once set aside for baptisms, confessions, weddings, and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass should not become a place designated for some offensive purpose — it would be disrespectful to the sacraments offered there, to the priests who offered them, to the Catholic laity who sacrificed to build the place, and who worshiped God there. 

Of course, eventually the Church loses control of a building it is no longer using. A deconsecrated church might pass hands a few times, and eventually be used for some immoral purpose. Or a buyer might conceal his intention for a church building he’s bidding on. 

But the Church is clear that when a deconsecrated church is to be sold, the local bishop should do some due diligence on who will buy it, to ensure it won’t be put to some purpose “that can give offense to the religious sentiment of a Christian people.” 

The bishop isn’t the only one with that responsibility. Canon law requires that the sale of a former church building have approval from the diocesan bishop, the diocesan finance council, and the diocesan college of consultors, a body of senior priests in leadership positions. 

That brings us back to Deer Park.

Masonic lodges are often seen as simple fraternal societies, where men of all religions and none can come together, leaving their differences at the door. 

But in fact, the Church has always taught that Freemasonry has an explicitly religious nature, which is antithetical to Christianity. 

The ritual for initiation into the first level of Masonry, for example, involves renouncing the unique saving power of the Church and the sacraments, and accepting that all religions are essentially equally partial truths, with Masonry offering the real, secret, truth needed to understand God.

The higher degrees of some Masonic branches, like the Royal Arch and Scottish Rites — whose membership has included some Deer Park Masons — have explicitly anti-Catholic rituals. 

In one initiation ceremony, a replica human skull wearing a mock papal tiara is presented to the candidate, to represent “the cruel and cowardly pontiff” — an “imposter” pretending to be the vicar of Christ. The candidate is invited to stab the skull with a dagger, and trample on the tiara.  

In his Masonic catechism, “Morals and Dogma,” the founder of the Scottish Rite, former Confederate General Albert Pike, described the society as “at its very origin devoted to the cause of opposition to the tiara of Rome.”

For that reason, canon law has always described Masonic lodges as “societies which plot against the Church.” The Church considers it a canonical crime for a Catholic to become a Mason, and maintains penalties for anyone who does so — including in the recently revised Book VI of the Code of Canon Law, promulgated by Pope Francis last year.

In light of that, it is not clear why the relevant diocesan bishop in Deer Park — in that case, Bishop Blase Cupich of Spokane, Washington — signed off on the 2011 sale of the former parish church to the Masonic lodge, nor why the college of consultors and diocesan financial council went along with the plan.

Perhaps there were few offers on the property. Perhaps, in a town with just a few thousand people, selling the former parish church to the Masons seemed like a neighborly thing to do. Or perhaps the Church’s opposition to Freemasonry seemed like an antiquated, old-fashioned idea.

But few canon lawyers would dispute that renovating a former church into a Masonic hall, when Masonic membership remains forbidden to Catholics, constitutes a “sordid use” of the building.

Maybe the idea seemed more ambiguous in 2011. But lest there remain any doubt, 2013 guidance from the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy explained that it would be better to demolish a former church than to sell it “for use inconsistent with its dignity.”  

Still, as dioceses across Europe and North America face shrinking congregations, and as bishops merge and close parishes, the Vatican has offered little concrete guidance on where to find the line between “profane” and “sordid” use.

Transitioning a former church into a Masonic hall would likely strike most informed Catholics as a sordid use. And other extreme possibilities also appear mostly self-evident: the difference between a restaurant and an “exotic dance” venue, for example. 

But other examples might prove harder to parse. What about a nightclub? Or a bar?

The line appears to blur even more when it comes to dealing with potential buyers with a religious or spiritual purpose. While the Church does teach respect for people of other faiths, it also sees a categorical difference between worship of God and everything else.

The recent sale of a former Catholic church in the Diocese of Rochester has made the Vatican’s paucity of guidance on the subject an acute challenge.

The Pillar reported this week that the deconsecrated church formerly known as Our Lady of Lourdes was sold this year by a parish in the Rochester diocese to a Hindu movement, which had plans to renovate the once sacred space into a Hindu temple.

The new owners of the former church announced in January their plans to install statues of Hindu gods in what was the church’s sanctuary, while retaining elements of the building’s former use, including stained glass windows depicting Gospel scenes and the lives of saints.

Installing statues depicting other gods in the very spot where the Mass was offered for years would strike many Catholics as sacrilegious, the building’s deconsecration notwithstanding. 

Of course, others might see turning a church building over for Hindu rituals and ceremonies as a kind of laudable gesture of inter-religious cooperation, despite Sacred Scripture’s persistent warnings about worshiping any but the one true God. 

And, indeed, some might think it unneighborly to refuse sale of a church to a group of Masons taking measurements for their lodge, even while the Vatican regards the group as a society plotting against the Church.

But at the moment, the specifics of “sordid use” are left mostly to the judgment of individual bishops, unless parishioners undergo lengthy and expensive appeals to the Vatican. And given the increasing rates of religious disaffiliation in the West, the prospect for questionable decisions on this front is becoming more likely. 

Whether in an eastern Washington Masonic lodge or an upstate New York Hindu temple, it is worth asking whether the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy might soon issue more specific rules about Church sales — to help both the bishops facing concrete decisions and the Catholics hoping beloved parish churches won’t be sold to whichever unseemly buyer bids the highest.