modify the Church's position when the new Code of Canon Law was completed." These reports apparently caused consternation in the Vatican, and were quickly corrected. The Holy See publicly said that canon 2335 was not abrogated, and denied it planned to "change profoundly" its historic prohibition against Catholics joining Masonic groups, although confidential sources said "a change in attitude in the future was considered possible." Informal dialogues between Catholic Church and Masonic representatives took place after Vatican II in Austria, Italy and Germany. In Austria, Freemason Karl Baresch, representative of the Grand Lodge of Austria, informally met Cardinal Franz König, president of the Secretariat for Non-Believers, at Vienna in 1968. Later, a commission of Catholic Church and Masonic representatives conducted a dialogue and produced the 1970 , an interpretative statement directed at Paul VI; Cardinal Franjo Šeper, prefect of the ; and other Catholic authorities. It "contained serious faults in philosophical-theological and, above all, historical terms," according to Professor Zbigniew Suchecki, and "was never officially recognized by" the Catholic Church. In 1971, Bishop Daniel Pezeril, auxiliary bishop of Paris, accepted an invitation from the Grande Loge de France to lecture. This was the first official reception of a Catholic bishop after 1738. While some speculated about post-conciliar revision of canon law and how norms would be legislated and enforced, the canonical prohibition against Catholics joining Masonic groups remained in force in 1974. The Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales (CBCEW) stated in 1974 that consultations with the world's bishops failed to produce consensus about the Catholic Church's relationship with Masonry. The wrote that many bishops had asked it about how to weight and interpret canon 2335. The divergent replies it gave reflected different situations in various countries. The reiterated that canons which establish a penalty are subject to strict interpretation, so canon 2335 applied only to Catholics who were members of Masonic associations that machinate against the Church. The interpreted as instructing bishops that canon 2335 "no longer automatically bars a Catholic from membership of Masonic groups" since it is subject to strict interpretation, and that "a Catholic who joins the Freemasons is excommunicated only if the policy and actions of the Freemasons in his area are known to be hostile to the Church." So, the defined norms within its jurisdiction, that Catholics, who believed that membership in Masonic associations "does not conflict" with their "deeper loyalty" to their