that it is impossible to belong to the Catholic Church and to Freemasonry at the same time." Some of the doctrines are incorporated into Catholic social teaching which are, in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, to appreciate democratic political systems which are accountable to the governed and to "reject all secret organizations that seek to influence or subvert the functioning of legitimate institutions." According to Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, and "are significant texts as they address the theoretical and practical reasons for the irreconcilability of masonry and Catholicism as concepts of truth, religion, God, man and the world, spirituality, ethics, rituality and tolerance." Freemasonry's position on Catholics joining the Fraternity Masonic bodies do not ban Catholics from joining if they wish to do so. There has never been a Masonic prohibition against Catholics joining the fraternity, and some Freemasons are Catholics, despite the Catholic Church's prohibition of joining the freemasons. Catholic fraternal societies Freemasonry was an important catalyst in the founding of the Knights of Columbus and the Knights of Peter Claver in the United States and the Knights of the Southern Cross in Australia, because one of the attractions of Freemasonry was that it provided a number of social services unavailable to non-members (e.g., devout Catholics). Michael McGivney, a Catholic priest in New Haven, Connecticut, wished to provide Catholic men with a Catholic fraternal organization, an alternative to Freemasonry with the attractiveness of selected membership and secret initiation, but neither oath-bound nor secret. Thus he founded the Knights of Columbus, believing that Catholicism and fraternalism were not incompatible and wished to found a society that would encourage men to be proud of their American Catholic heritage. McGivney was beatified by Pope Francis in 2020. The KoC, though accepting African-American members early on in its history, soon came to identify in many of its councils with segregationist and anti-Black viewpoints, leading to the denial of membership to many prospective black candidates. As a result, the Josephites founded the Knights of Peter Claver in 1909, which as of 2021 is the largest and oldest Black Catholic organization in America. See also Anticlericalism and Freemasonry Anti-Masonry Nicodemites Christianity and Freemasonry Papal documents relating to Freemasonry Religious Question (Brazil) Notes References Translated in Further reading Anti-Masonry