Declaration on Masonic associations

The Declaration on Masonic Associations is a declaration by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith re-iterating the prohibition of Catholics from joining Masonic organizations. Its Latin title is Declaratio de associationibus massonicis. The document states that Catholics who join Masonic organizations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion. It was issued in 1983 by the prefect of the congregation, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI on April 19, 2005.

Catholic canon law has forbidden membership in Masonic organizations since 1738, with Pope Clement XII's papal bull In eminenti apostolatus. Later popes continued to ban Masonic membership through the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries. When canon law was codified into the 1917 Code of Canon Law, these existing prohibitions were preserved in the code, especially in Can 2335. The 1917 code forbids Catholics, under the penalty of excommunication, to enroll in Masonic or other similar associations.

Can 2335: Affiliation With Masonic or Similar Societies. Those who join a Masonic sect or other societies of the same sort, which plot against the Church or against legitimate civil authority, incur ipso facto an excommunication simply reserved to the Holy See. [p. 924.]

The 1983 Code of Canon Law superseded the 1917 Code. Specific mention of Masonry was omitted from the new code. Membership in organizations that "plot against the Church", however, is prohibited.

Can. 1374. A person who joins an association which plots against the Church is to be punished with a just penalty; one who promotes or takes office in such an association is to be punished with an interdict.

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