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 a 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 unGod-like.
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 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 on 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
can 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 an 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 175l, 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 Freemasonry was kept secret; place of meeting; men who
belonged; candidates proposed, 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 Seal 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!"
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 country, 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 of 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 escape-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 a 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 personal freedom within the law; 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!
*An illusion to tiler's implements with which he erased the designs drawn the
lodge floor for the instruction of candidates.
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