Did Joe Biden violate his Catholic faith by becoming a Freemason on the last full day of his presidency? Maybe.
It already feels like a new order of the ages has taken root in the little more than a week since Donald Trump became president. Thanks to Trump’s opening bout of executive actions, we are so many degrees removed from the Biden presidency that some might be tempted to think it would require an all-seeing eye to take it all in. So it’s understandable if you missed the news that Joe Biden became a Freemason just before his presidency ended.
Er, maybe. We do know that on January 19, the last full day Biden was president, the Conference of Grand Masters of Prince Hall Lodge Freemasonry stated that the Grand Lodge of South Carolina had granted a “resolution of membership” to him.
Does this mean Biden is now a Freemason? And if so, is Biden once again in violation of the precepts of his faith, as the Catholic Church still proscribes Freemasonry? At The Pillar, Ed Condon has an illuminating explainer. Condon clarifies both the canonical reality that Freemasonry is forbidden for Catholics and explains the theological reasons why: Freemasonry “removed Catholics from legitimate ecclesiastical oversight while they were being, effectively, catechised into a new philosophy — a different way of looking at the world.”
What, then, of Biden’s specific case? It’s complicated. Although the lodge that issued the resolution originated separately from American Freemasonry — American Freemasons once banned black men from joining (lodges also worked against Catholics and politically collaborated with the Ku Klux Klan), so black Americans established their own version, called “Prince Hall” masonry — it remains problematic from the Church’s perspective.
But ambiguities remain, according to Condon:
For a start, it is not clear to what extent Biden accepted, formally or informally, membership of the lodge, or if it was merely presented to him as something they did for (and to) him. Pictures of the event show the president shaking hands and embracing the head of the lodge, but not receiving any certificate or physical representation of membership.
That matters, because the actual crime in canon law is not the status of being a member of a masonic lodge but the act of joining.
Simply put, if Biden didn’t actively do anything to join the Freemasons or accept his membership, it’s reasonable to conclude that he did not violate the relevant canon, which — in accord with canonical principles — must be interpreted strictly.
Of course, that doesn’t change the Vatican’s standing decree that any Catholic who is a member of a masonic lodge (even passively) is in a state of grave sin and barred from receiving Communion.
But, again, Biden would have to himself accept, even passively by not rejecting the designation, the conferred membership — the masons don’t have the power to make someone a member without consent, anymore than one person can marry another without their consent.
A further question arises: What ecclesiastical authority would judge and — if necessary — punish Biden if he were determined to have acted consciously and deliberately in the wrong? Condon concludes that only the pope could do so. However, “it seems vanishingly unlikely that Pope Francis will authorize an examination of the facts of Biden’s masonic membership — still less authorize the imposition of a penalty for one of his final days as president.”
It seems this mystery about Joe Biden will endure.