Take that, you Synagogue of Satan (Blessed Pope Pius IX's description of the Freemasonic Lodge in Etsi multa, 21 November 1873)!
From LifeSiteNews
By Patrick Delaney
The College of St. Joseph the Worker announced plans to purchase Steubenville’s longstanding Masonic temple, exorcise it, and convert it into a shrine and public gathering space.
The College of St. Joseph the Worker in Steubenville, Ohio, announced that it will purchase the city’s historic Masonic temple and transform it into a Catholic shrine and public space.
According to an announcement from the college, later this year, in November, “the Freemasons of Steubenville will hold their last event in the temple they have occupied for nearly a century and then move out. When they do, the College of St. Joseph the Worker will buy the building, exorcise it, and give it back to the city as a shrine, a table, and an athenaeum.”
The 500-seat theater will function as a public athenaeum for symphonies, lectures, literary festivals, and civic events. “It is not a college auditorium that occasionally admits the public. It is a public hall that the College of St. Joseph the Worker welcomes the public into,” the announcement explained.
A shrine will hold first-class relics and a replica of the Shroud of Turin, and Pope Clement’s Cafe will become downtown Steubenville’s first high-end restaurant.
College President Jacob Imam said, “A city that cannot gather cannot recover. Steubenville needs a room where people can sit down together — for a symphony, a lecture, a commencement. We will now offer one.” He added, “Our students will restore this building with their own hands … That is not a fundraising line; that is the curriculum.”
The project carries a $4 million fundraising goal by January 10, 2027.
‘The Word became flesh, and picked up a hammer’
The College of St. Joseph the Worker opened its doors to its first students in the fall of 2024 in downtown Steubenville, welcoming an inaugural class of 31 students from 21 states. By the following year, it was enrolling a total of 63 students as it continued to grow.
Founded by Imam, the institution was established to address what its leaders see as a separation between intellectual formation and practical work.
“We’re totally trying to call the bluff on the great divorce between the head and the hands,” Imam explained to the New Yorker in April. “We’ve told people that the blue-collar trades are no longer dignified … forgetting that Christ himself — God himself! — spent most of the years of his life at a workbench.”
Born into a Muslim family, Imam embarked on a journey of conversion first to Protestant Christianity and later entered full communion with the Catholic Church under the guidance of his godfather, Walter Hooper, who happened to be the personal secretary of C.S. Lewis.
As a Marshall scholar, Imam additionally earned his master’s and doctorate from the University of Oxford, writing his dissertation on theology and economics.
Explaining how St. Joseph the Worker is different from other colleges, he said they combine “rigorous academics with skilled trades training, allowing students to earn a bachelor’s degree and a journeyman’s card while graduating debt-free.”
Integrating the head, heart and hands
Students pursue a Bachelor of Arts in Catholic Studies while training in one of four skilled trades: carpentry, HVAC, plumbing, or electrical work. The curriculum integrates a core of Church history and Sacred Scripture with hands-on shop courses, lectio (close reading) courses, and disputatio (seminar-style discussion) courses modeled on the methods of the medieval universities of Christendom. The goal is to form graduates who can sanctify family life, the workplace, and the broader temporal order while, again, graduating without crippling debt.
Endorsements from figures such as Cardinal Raymond Burke, Dr. Scott Hahn, and Matt Fradd are included on the college’s website as well. Hahn, who teaches at neighboring Franciscan University, writes how “the college’s intention to form people to integrate the head, the heart and the hands — modeled in Christ’s own incarnation — gives me great hope for the future of the Church.”
The purchasing, exorcising, and transforming the Masonic Temple “is an opportunity that’s just a bit too exciting to keep to ourselves and it is an effort that is too big for us to do alone,” Imam said in an explanatory video. And thus, we are asking you to partner with us. Let us transform the Freemasons Temple into a shrine in honor of Our Resurrected Lord.”
Those who wish to donate to this project may visit the website of the college here and scroll down.
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