The Great Masonic Apology, by Bro. Cliff Porter

In the 1820s Masonry was unfortunate enough to make the acquaintance of William Morgan. There is no evidence that Morgan was ever a Mason, what is certain is that he entered into contract to expose ritual from the Royal Arch, was arrested in September 1826, was taken from his jail, and was never seen again. Three members of the Craft were later arrested in regards to related charges and served time. There are wonderful ups and downs in regards to the story, conundrums wrapped in enigmas if you will and all go beyond the point of this article and my reasons for bringing up the affair in the first place. My point in mentioning the affair at all, was that it created the catalyst that would be the cause for the decline in Masonry even today. I am not speaking of the decline in membership that seems to be the discussion of many of today’s current membership, but the decline of the Masonic experience overall. The Morgan Affair ushered in the Great Masonic Apology and we have been apologizing ever since.

The Morgan Affair created in the collective Masonic psyche aversions to secrecy, fraternity, and the actual philosophies inculcated in Freemasonry. Masonry would recover in numbers, and even swell during the era of fraternal organizations, but our halls were hollowed of their mystical teachings and we would institute a tradition of placation and apology.

It might prove helpful to examine some of the changes that have occurred in American Craft Masonry and Scottish Rite Masonry to better understand my statement.

Beginning with the Morgan Affair we eliminated the mysticism. As the anti-Masonic Party began its rise to power, the Craft hemorrhaged members. They flooded away for fear that it could tarnish or destroy a political or Christian reputation. This occurred because of an earlier apology and small dose of dangerous pride that allowed us to convince ourselves, in an attempt to convince others, that we were not a secret society. We degenerated to the point that a lack of secrecy and disclaimer is a common theme in apologies that still occur to this day. We have many a website and have interviewed for many a television camera and tout the statement, “we are not a secret society, but a society with secrets.” Sadly, if we would worry less about public and profane opinion, we would not have public awareness programs or anything of the sort. We should be a secret society whose charity is evident only in such a way that whenever good men gather, the community benefits as a result. If we would have maintained the secrets of our membership and treated the society as such, then men would not have had to flee from their associations with us for fear of their reputations.

The natural product of this loss of secrecy and membership was a desire to appease those who decided to point a finger as we voluntarily declared and exposed our membership. To appease these Victorian minded puritans who would usher in a number of successful programs such as the anti-Masonic Party and prohibition (if you caught the sarcasm it was completely intentional) we would begin a ruin of the Craft in apology to deaf ears. We have apologized to a rather loud, but utterly unsuccessful, minority group of fundamentalist pushing an agenda that is counter to personal freedom and choice. We have apologized to those we are sworn to defend against. We are the keepers of freewill, choice, and free conscience. We flung our doors open, hung our heads, and here is the greatest of tragedies, we put to rest our mystical philosophy. So much so, that it has become the real lost word in our lodges. Our spiritualism and mysticism were so tucked away, that there are generations of men who would argue that such “liberal” thoughts and ideas do not occur as part of or as a result of Freemasonry.

This is the same group of people that have actually played a role in the drafting, in part, of a number of Masonic constitutions throughout the Grand Lodges in America. We decided as part of and even prior to prohibition that the grown man with all his faculties should not consume alcoholic beverages. We decided that Masons could not be trusted to perform the duties of a Mason, that the Junior Wardens could not be expected to fulfill their duties, that appendant bodies should follow suit, and we eliminated the grown mans ability to raise a glass and toast his Brothers at an Agape or Festive Board. Hypocrisy abounds with this particular apologetic. We have the Shrine Clubs which have bars in them, we have hospitality suites at our Grand Lodge sessions, we drink at home and with our friends, we just can’t drink with our Masonic friends without sneaking it like we were 15 years old and tipping a sip of our father’s favorite scotch. Nonetheless, listen to the cries of the young men who simply want to toast a fellow Brother, enjoy a great glass of wine with good food as part of the Masonic experience, actually hoist a drink during the Feast of Tishri, and exercise their free choice and freewill. They will tell you that their attempts to overturn this ridiculous, hypocritical, and outdated apology have meant with impassioned speeches of doom and destruction. Well, we are Masons; we study the liberal arts and sciences, do we not? Let’s look at Freemasonry in the rest of the entire civilized world and see what effects allowing a man to consume an alcoholic beverage with his Brother have had. We would find refined scotch tastings, ladies festivals filled with fine wine and dancing, and fellowship spent over a pint of the local brew. No doom and gloom. No destruction. As a matter of fact, Masonry is doing better in many of those places. Oh and lawsuits. Yes, if a man has a beer the Fraternity will get sued if he crashes or the like. Really? Site some examples please. I am looking at the bars and liquor stores in existence and wondering why they have not met this miserable fate. Why haven’t they, because it is bunk and the ramblings of those who espouse bureaucratic and legal fallacy while knowing little of actual facts?

The fundamentalist, the evangelical Christian community with an anti-Masonic slant, the self proclaimed moralist do not like Freemasonry because it encourages free thought, free speech, and freedom of religion. They are never going to like Masonry, they are never going to stop fighting the aims of such groups. It is not in their best interest to do so. They want an uninformed class of members with zealous faith that is based on devotion and not study and reasoned thought. We are, in essence, enemies. We owe them no apology. We should pride ourselves that they consider the Craft a threat to their aims and abolish every foolish addition to Masonic constitutions or sets of by-laws ever created in apology to them.

Allow me to address, what I consider, the strangest of apologies. The apology to the POTENTIAL candidate. Prior to the man ever becoming a member we bow our heads and divert our gaze and offer the following apologies.

1. Sir, we are sorry that it cost money to be a member. Allow us to keep our dues artificially low and under fund the infrastructure and programs of the Craft. Allow us to reduce and remove any quality education, travel, and ritual experience for our members because we have no money to do so. Allow our buildings and temples to fall into disrepair and dilapidation so that we never need charge a reasonable fee for the degrees or the dues that follow. Sir, who might be interested, Masonry is cheap. It’s real affordable. Please sir, we are sorry that we even have to charge, please become a member.

2. Sir, we are sorry that it takes time. We have removed the requirements for memory work, for proficiencies, for participation in lodge even. All we need is about one afternoon of your time and you are a Brother. We are sorry that we used to ask for even the slightest commitment. If we can just have the paltry fee that we discussed and already apologized for above, we will get you rushed through, you will not have to learn anything, as a matter of fact, you won’t learn anything, and we can issue this dues card and get you on the books.

If the aforementioned antics of the present state of apology don’t manage get me a bit riled up, then the apologies we make to the public at large certainly do. The Scottish Rite is suffering greatly from these as we speak and if we don’t wrestle this beautiful and mystical system from the grasp of the Great Apology she will die. She will be a shell of her formal self and she will die.

For instance, so that you might better understand me, Scottish Rite petitions used to require a signature of the future candidate proclaiming the following certain ideology with the following phraseology, “The entire separation of church and state and opposition to every attempt to appropriate public monies—Federal, state, or local—directly or indirectly, for the support of sectarian or private institutions.” Several petitions, including those presently available for download from the Seattle Scottish Rite website have only, “THE SUPREME COUNCIL REQUIRES ACCEPTANCE OF THE FOLLOWING FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES: THE INCULCATION OF PATRIOTISM, RESPECT FOR LAW AND ORDER, UNDYING LOYALTY TO THE PRINCIPLES OF CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. DO YOU APPROVE OF THESE PRINCIPLES? ________ YES ________ NO.”

It would not be reasonable to believe that the removal of the wording was arbitrary. Are the ideas of the separation of church and state no longer valid belief systems important for a free government run by its populace and not by its church? Are the ideas of theocracy and despotism somehow more appealing than they used to be and less of threat? I think not. Clearly, the wars and conflicts of the world that are based on religion and the beliefs systems of those fanatical followers who would attempt to enforce their belief system as form of government are evidence enough that the concept is still needed and not out dated. So, if separation of church and state is still a necessary component of free government, free speech, and freewill, then why have we removed it? Let me hypothesize that it was form of apology. Someone somewhere decided that the general public, the profane, might find such a statement as politically incorrect or somehow offensive. I find the logic behind this line of thinking similar to the statement that the New Testament of the Bible is anti-Semitic and telling the story of the Nazarene is of a similar vein. Hogwash! This is the same idiotic thinking that would allow someone to claim a German bias and hatred of the Germanic people for telling the story of the holocaust. We have many a religious man in our ranks, so must we remove this statement for fear that he is a fundamentalist Christian in support of theocracy to ensure that he is comfortable. Incredible as it may seem, this might be yet another apology in action. It is likely an apology to the fundamentalist, whose philosophies are in opposition to those the Rite. No worries Brother. Although your particular philosophies are in direct conflict with those teachings of the Scottish Rite we will remove these offensive writings for you. We will remove the important teachings inculcated within the Rite. We will change the petitioning process so that you, a man with no interest in promoting and participating in our present philosophies, can gain entry. I hope I am not alone in recognizing the absolute absurdity of this.

I would like to address another apology of the Rite apparently to the general public or no one in particular. Maybe we should classify this one as a preemptive apology. We apologize before anyone is offended in the event that someone might be or could ever be offended. This apology comes in the form of removing different parts of the degree ritual exemplifications. For instance, in symbolism that man should never allow a man to sit in despotic rule over the masses guised as God on earth, claiming his personal orthodoxy as divine will, there used to be a certain stomping on or walking upon a symbol of such a system. No more, nope, gone in many jurisdictions.

Many symbols of the Craft have gone the wayside of this befuddling preemptive apology. The skull and cross bones as a symbol of mortality and the price one should be willing to pay to keep his integrity. The skeletons upon a cross in the 18th degree symbolism have suffered similar fate. It is still listed within the script of the Scottish Rite Southern Jurisdiction, but how many consistories utilize it? Not many.

I was privy to recent discussion of Masonic favoritism in the work place. The statement was made that as Masons we should be careful not to give any other Masons special consideration for employment or services because it might be perceived poorly by those outside the Craft. That someone might legislate against the Fraternity for these unspeakable acts of “good ol’ boyism.” Again, I am forced to ask really? Really? So, the famous Aggies, Air Force Academy grads, alumni of the various Greek clubs, do not participate in such activities? They do and they are unapologetic. The Aggies boast that this is a benefit of graduating from the university. They have alumni clubs that network in hundreds, if not thousands, of cities across the United States. But we must never take a man, whom we believe to be of a high caliber morally and ethically and use this as a good starting place when choosing employees or picking service provider? The idea that we should not is repugnant and flies in the face of common sense. We ought to guard the gate like it was intended to be guarded and then utilize the membership as a foundation for good decision making because Brothers are automatically understood as a the crème of the crop when it comes to integrity and fairness.

Brothers, to whom do we owe the obedience of our obligations? To one another. We owe the Craft and our Brothers. I am encouraging the Craft as a whole to put aside our desires to make the Freemasonry all things to all men. It is not meant to be such vehicle and it never will be. If you try to bend it and shape it as such, you will kill it, and you are killing it in many ways given its present condition.

Stop the apology. Freewill, free thought, free religion, free conscience; they are all laudable pursuits. We do not need to apologize for them. We do not need to apologize for the deep and meaningful way that the philosophies of the Craft improve its men and make them better. We do not need to apologize to anyone except our current membership for letting our guard down and apologizing to those who were not entitled to such for wrongs that were nonexistent. This, by itself, would progress the Craft and heal it more than any catchy slogan or membership drive ever will.