Freemasonry - The Church's Approach to Freemasonry

The masons hold that human reason alone is an ultimate judge of all things, and that human nature is neither inclined to sin nor in need of the redeeming grace of christ. So it's very much opposed to what the catholic church teaches. In Rome's first response to the rise of the masonic lodges, clement the twelfth in 17 38 judged freemasonry so serious a matter, and membership in it so dangerous,. That he imposed an automatic excommunication on any catholic who joined the freemasons.