Vatican’s ‘No’ to Freemasonry is Also About Enemy Within

The Vatican’s renewed no to Freemasonry came in a response to a dubium from a bishop in the Philippines. Dubia are a form of official query about doctrine or policy that usually go to curial officials, though occasionally – as was the case in a recent high-profile contretemps over Pope Francis’s 2016 apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia – they go directly to the pope. This one was fielded by the new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Victor Fernandez, and was published with Francis’s permission and approval. ...The question this Vatican watcher has is: Why not make this sort of transparency standard practice, at least when it comes to dubia generally? Transparency in governance has been a major problem not only for the Vatican but for the Church’s leadership culture just about everywhere.