Does the Vatican regard Freemasonry as a big deal, or not?

In the last two weeks, prominent Italian bishops, including the pope’s own cardinal vicar for Rome, made dramatic interventions to prevent church funerals scheduled for men discovered to be Freemasons.

In the same span of time, the Holy See announced the appointment of a prominent Italian academic to a pontifical committee who, it has since been reported, is also a Freemason.

Umberto Longo, a prominent academic and Director of the Italian Historical Institute for the Middle Ages in Rome, was named to the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences on August 13. It was subsequently reported by the website InfoVaticana that publicly available documents bill Longo as a frequent attendee at Masonic conferences and recognize him as a relatively senior member of an especially anti-Catholic strand of Freemasonry.

It is, as yet, unclear what the Vatican’s response will be to the Longo affair, though he is by no means the first appointee to a papal committee to be affiliated with positions or organizations condemned by the Church. It seems possible that the Vatican could move swiftly to cancel Longo’s appointment, and equally possible to see