Holy See¶

The Holy See governs a church whose members are citizens of other states, which makes it the clearest case of the tie the historical record shows being turned against the lodges: belonging to something larger than the nation. When the Swiss voted on banning Freemasonry, Catholic opponents of the ban warned that the next ban could be theirs. The Holy See has nothing to purge and no court to capture. Its exposure lies in other capitals, in any state that decides belonging to the Church is loyalty to somebody else, and a sovereign in Rome makes that argument easy to put.

The clerk’s briefs¶

From the clerks, for the Patrician’s eyes

Nothing to read. If a state does make the tie suspect, its Catholic citizens pay, the clergy first, and the Holy See can answer only by diplomacy.

Nothing filed yet¶

The clerks have found no development in the period that bears on the steps of the historical record. The hinge they would watch is abroad: the first state to treat a tie to the Holy See as a tie to a foreign power.