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The lodge was in semi-darkness and the brethren, standing at their columns, wore aprons and collars. It was an ordinary meeting, in the Entered Apprentice degree, and the opening ritual proceeded as usual: the Grand Expert carried the flame around the pavement of black and white tiles, the Worshipful Master lit the candles on his table, and the two Wardens in turn invoked wisdom, strength, and beauty. One of the masters present knew every phrase by heart; he had spoken them himself from several offices, including that of Worshipful Master. That night he barely listened. When he returned home, past midnight, he wrote his letter of resignation.
His name is Serge Abad-Gallardo, he is an architect and for years was a senior official in the French territorial administration. He recounts that scene at the beginning of I Served Lucifer Without Knowing It, the book he published in France in 2016 and which Homo Legens translated into Spanish in 2018. It is the testimony of a man who spent twenty-four years in Freemasonry and left it through the door of faith.
According to his account, he had joined in February 1989 in Le Droit Humain, a mixed and international obedience of men and women. By the time of that meeting he was over fifty and was progressing through the higher degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. He had just completed the 12th degree, that of Grand Architect, and everything indicated that he would soon be proposed for the 13th and 14th. Ahead lay the 18th degree, Knight of the Rose Croix, and the 30th, Knight Kadosh. Abad-Gallardo stresses that in that world one does not enter by asking: access is by co-option, after years of discreet examination inside and outside the lodge.
But something had changed. For about a year he had been living his Catholic faith again and did not hide it. The author places the turning point before the grotto of Massabielle, in Lourdes, where he says he received a sign from the Virgin that opened his eyes. In later interviews he has recounted that the first step was more modest: a moment of prayer before an image of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux in the cathedral of Narbonne, next to his office. His lodge brethren, he writes, looked at him in three ways: with the affection one has for a distracted friend, with skepticism, and a few with the suspicion aroused by someone about to betray.
During that last meeting, he recounts, the word that came to his mind was “masquerade.” The apron and collar suddenly seemed to him a mere costume, and the ritual that for two decades had filled him began to sound false. He had tried to stay in order to speak of Christ to his companions, but he considered the attempt a failure. He had become, he says, a man of faith, and “he could no longer bear to be a man of secrecy.”
While drafting the letter, his initiation came back to his memory. He recalls that, when the blindfold was removed, he found himself surrounded by Masons pointing swords at his chest, and that the Worshipful Master explained to him that those weapons only threatened traitors and perjurers. He knew that, from that night, the traitor would be him.
The letter is dated, according to the book, October 9, 2013. Abad-Gallardo relates that the regulations of his obedience present withdrawal as a simple procedure: it is enough for the resignation to be read in a solemn meeting. And so it was. On November 15 he received from his Worshipful Master a curt note: the lodge had recorded his resignation the previous day. Twenty-four years of membership were closed with a formula of courtesy and a signature. Before that, he recounts, two sisters of the higher degrees met with him, as the regulations provide, in theory to make sure of his decision and, in his view, to try to dissuade him. They were kind and genuinely saddened, but they soon understood that they had lost him.
What came afterward, according to the author, belies the idea that leaving Freemasonry is easy. Former brethren, some close friends, began to avoid him on the street; they stopped inviting him to dinner; in his professional environment, where well-placed Masons abounded, the atmosphere grew tense. With his first book, published in 2014, came public insults and accusations of intolerance.
The Church has been consistent on this point. The declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of November 26, 1983, signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, maintained that Masonic principles are incompatible with Catholic doctrine. On November 13, 2023, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández and with the approval of Francis, reiterated it in response to a Filipino bishop: the active membership of a faithful in Freemasonry remains forbidden.
The resignation is only the threshold of the book. From there, Abad-Gallardo, who does not disguise his combative tone, examines from within the symbols of the lodge, from the checkered pavement to the Fellow Craft’s lever; the influence he attributes to the obediences in laws such as those on divorce or abortion; and the thesis that gives the work its title: that many Masons, like him, serve without knowing it a master they do not know. It is a strong thesis, and the reader will judge it, but the one who defends it was inside the room.
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Section sponsored by Homo Legens I Served Lucifer Without Knowing It Serge Abad-Gallardo · Bibliotheca Homo Legens · 16,90 € |
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