THE SHORT TALK BULLETIN |
... Why Freemasonry Has Enemies ...
Say "Anti-Masonry" to the average American Mason and he will think you speak
only of the Morgan affair of 1826. So Many books have been written on this, so
many speeches made about it, so many study clubs have discussed it, that it is
pretty much in the class with political oratory - interesting once, but as bore
when much repeated!
Anti-Masonry neither began nor ended with the Morgan affair. The Fraternity has
always had its enemies and, unless the world reforms spiritually, doubtless
always will. BUT WHY?
Doubtless there are many answers. Many roads may wind around a mountain - they
must meet at the top. No matter how many separate causes for the hatred,
dislike, enmity which men have conceived - and some still do - for the Gentle
Craft, all these mistaken ideas may be referred to one cause.
Examine just a few of the exhibitions of anti-Masonry, other than the Morgan
affair - which was a sporadic explosion, not a deep - rooted and poisonous
plant.
Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Stalin could not permit the existence of a society
which is predicated upon the brotherhood of man; they were, and are, too much
committed to a society predicated upon a police power which knows no mercy and
has but one object; the destruction of people, ideas, and organizations which do
not believe that man is nothing, the State (and its ruler or rulers) everything.
Mussolini's anti-Masonic feeling was expressed in his doctrine of conflict,
which does not even mention the Craft:
"Humanity is still and always an abstraction of time and space; men are still
not brothers, do not want to be and evidently cannot be. Peace is hence absurd,
or rather it is a pause in war. There is something that binds man to his destiny
of struggling, against either his fellows or himself. The motives for the
struggle may change indefinitely, they may be economic, religious, political,
sentimental, But the legend of Cain and Abel seems to be the inescapable
reality, while brotherhood is a fable men listen to during the bivouac and the
truce."
General Erich Ludendorff wrote a booklet against Freemasonry of which more than
a hundred thousand copies were sold. too long to quote here, the reader may get
an idea of its contents from some of his words.
"Masonry brings its members into conscious subjection to the Jews...... it
trains them to become venal Jews.... German Masonry is a branch of organized
international Masonry the headquarters of which are in New York.... there also
is the seat of Jewish world power...."
Ludendorff blamed Freemasons for bringing America into the world War I, helped
by the Jesuits, B'nai B'rith and the Grand Lodge of New York! This, he stated,
was done to destroy Austria Hungary, a Catholic world power. Had it not been for
Freemasonry, Germany would have won the war - Kaiser Wilhelm and Czar Nicholas
lost their thrones because they were not Freemasons - and so on and on and on
for eighty-two pages of "Annihilation of Freemasonry Through revelation of its
Secrets!"
Not all anti-Masonry has had causes so fundamental, which lie so deep; small
jealousies and little rascals have started anti - Masonic movements; several
religions have fought and, indeed, now fight the Craft, as sinful and ungodlike.
The opposition of the Catholic church, based on the Papal Bull of 1738, many
times renewed, expanded, explained and emphasized, is well known. The Lutheran
church as a whole has been unfriendly to the Craft and certain Synods rabid
against it. the Mormon church has been anti-Masonic ever since hundreds of
Mormons were expelled from Masonry by the Grand Lodge of Illinois. Even the
Gentle Quakers have opposed Freemasonry and not always gently!
When organized religion has disputed with Freemasonry, it is largely because of
the thought that Masonic teaching of "that natural religion in which all men
agree" might take the place of that which it espoused; knowing that the
Fraternity operated by means of a secret ritual, obligations, religious beliefs
and the doctrine that all men of whatever faith might worship a Great Architect
of the Universe around a common Altar, Freemasonry became a rival! Just as
science disputes with no religion, so Freemasonry does not now and never has
questioned any man's faith. There has never been an anti-clerical party composed
only of Masons; there have been anti-Masonic parties in many clerical circles.
As late as 1896 an anti-Masonic party convened at Trent. In the BUILDER, April,
1918, George W. Baird, P.G.M. District of Columbia, reports that the general and
particular aims of this council were to wage war on Masonry as an institution;
on Masons as individuals, in all countries and places where the order exists; to
wage war on Masonry as a body, by collecting supposed documents and facts;
assertions of perjured Masons as evidence and thus bring to light or rather to
coin, by means of the press or special publications, all the misdeeds of the
fatal institution; all the demoralizing influences it exercises; through obscene
or sacrilegious rites, corruption and occult conspiracies of man and
civilization; to wage war on individual Masons by opposing them in every phase
of their existence, in their homes, in their industries, in their commerce, in
their professional vocations, in all their endeavors to participate in public
life, local or general, etc.
The first anti-Masonic campaign - if it an be called that - in the American
Colonies occurred in 1737. According to an account published in the Pennsylvania
Gazette (Benjamin Franklin's paper) an apothecary duped a young man (Daniel
Reese) who had expressed a desire to be a Freemason, into a false and ridiculous
ceremony, ending in a scene in which the devil was supposed to appear. When the
young man refused to be frightened, the "devil" became angry and threw a pan of
flaming spirits on the candidate, who died of burns three days later.
Freemasons, though innocent, were blamed and the incident (if death can be
called and incident!) spread far and wide to the serious but not too lengthy
embarrassment of Masons of the City of Brotherly Love.
There were a few sporadic attacks in the Colonial press against Freemasonry,
including one in Boston in 1751, but no real opposition of any moment in this
nation until the Morgan affair of 1826. (See Short Talk Bulletin of March 1933
and February 1946.)
But the Colonies were not to escape prejudice, even if unorganized, for
Pritchard's Masonry Dissected (1730) and Jachin and Boaz (1762) both had wide
circulation, the latter pamphlet being reprinted here more than a dozen times;
one edition was printed in Spanish in Philadelphia as late as 1822.
These "expose's" purporting to print the ritual, ceremonies and "secrets" of
Freemasonry (invaluable now as giving clues to practices and words otherwise
lost in the mist of the years) were then intended as body blows at the Ancient
Craft. In early days all Freemasonry was kept secret; place of meeting; men who
belonged; candidates proposes, were all considered to be "esoteric". Hence there
was a great curiosity on the part of the public and a large circulation of
pamphlets designed to injure the Fraternity by "exposing" its charter, ritual
and secrets. Today, few would look at and less would buy such a pamphlet on a
newsstand - then, the public demanded these in quantities.
Like all such, the motive of their publication--whether revenge for fancied
slights or avarice - kept them from being too seriously considered by the better
educated and thinking class.
In England, Pritchard's "Masonry Dissected" raised a storm when it was
published, and was reflected even in the songs of the day. An actress in 1765
offered the following, as coming from the anti - Masonic Scald Miserable Masons:
"Next for the secret of their own wise making,
Hiram and Boaz and Grand Master Jachin;
Poker and tongs-the sign-the word-the stroke
'Tis all a nothing and 'tis all a joke!
Nonsense on nonsense! Let them storm and rail
Here's the whole history of the mop and pail*
For 'tis the sense of more than half the town
Their secret is-a bottle at the Crown!" *
an allusion to the tiler's implements with which he erased the designs drawn
upon the lodge floor for he instruction of candidates.
Although inspired by the Morgan affair, the letters of John Quincy Adams had an
anti-Masonic effect long after Morgan was forgotten. President Adams was never a
Freemason; we have his own words as proof of that. That he was an implacable
enemy of the institution is shown by his "Letters on the Masonic Institution"
published in book form in Boston in 1847. His enmity of the Fraternity sprang
from his belief in the reality of the "murder" of Morgan, the activities of the
anti-Masonic party and his own great credulity and strong prejudice. His
character as a man, his service to his county, his exhaustless energy made
serious his attacks on Freemasonry, even though he displayed a woeful ignorance
of the Order, its principles, practices, history and accomplishments.
John Quincy Adams is long gathered to his fathers. His "letters" remain largely
unread in libraries and in the minds of historians. He did the fraternity harm
once, but, judged by the perspective of a century, it was without permanent
effect.
These are but the slightest thumb-nail sketches of a few of the outbreaks
against Freemasonry. In all countries since the organization of the Mother Grand
Lodge, there have been these ebullitions of passions and prejudice; in some
lands, tortures and burnings; destructions of Masonic property, imprisonment of
Masons, especially in World War II.
These persecutions have had a hundred underlying causes; avarice, jealousy,
desire for notoriety, disappointment, envy, the belief that he climbs high who
climbs ruthlessly, the need for a scrape-goat: the list is endless. But all, in
the last analysis, boil down to one cause. as the greater swallows the less, the
large encompasses the little, the race includes all its blood strains, so the
reason for the enmity of Freemasons and Freemasonry, encompassing all of many
causes, is simple.
There is always a conflict between any two opposing beliefs, doctrines, dogmas,
religions, philosophies, political systems. For hundreds of years organized
religion fought science; the doctrine of the divine right of kings ran headlong
into the doctrine of the equality of man; today we see democracy and Communism
in a cold war to the death; less spectacular but none the less real has been the
split of Lincoln's famous words, resulting in the opposition of those who
believe in government by the people, to those who believe only in government of
the people, by the governor!
Freemasonry is a philosophy which cannot exist side by side with certain
ideologies. Either the latter must sink or Freemasonry must be banished.
Wherever men have believed that one man or some men are above the law which
applies to the many; wherever as government is by men and not by law,
Freemasonry is anathema, must be persecuted, thrown out, dispersed, done away.
Freemasonry stands and has always stood for freedom of political thought; for
freedom of religious thought; for the dignity, importance and worth of the
individual. In Freemasonry there is neither high nor low-"We meet upon the
level". In Freemasonry is no compulsion; a man must come to it and be of it "of
his own free will and accord." In Freemasonry is no religious sect: men of all
religions or of no religion, join hands in kneeling about a common Altar erected
to the Great Architect of the Universe, by which name each can worship the God
he knows.
Such a plan, such a doctrine, such a brotherhood, cannot but be inimical to the
selfish, the crooked, the power-hungry, the dictator, the religion which opposes
any doctrine but its own, the self-seeking, the envious, the coward, the
prejudiced, the passionate and the dishonest.
The reason for all the attacks on Masonry, no matter how attempted or by whom
accomplished, can be expressed in a word...
The word is FEAR. Fear of what?
OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT!