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MASONIC AND CHURCH TITLES
submitted by Bro Percy Aga

WRITING in "Ars Quatuor Coronatum," Volume XXIII., Canon Horsley points out that many of the names and titles used in Masonry have been suggested by, and borrowed directly and in their accustomed order from, the Church of England. He illustrates as follows:

1. The Church. of England has at its head the two Primates of Canterbury and York, and their official title is "The Most Reverend." Masonry in England, therefore, has the Most Worshipful the Grand Master and the Most Worshipful Pro-Grand Master.

2. Under them in the hierarchy come the Right Reverend the Bishops. So Masonry puts next to its heads the Right Worshipful the Deputy Grand Master, the Right Worshipful Provincial Grand Masters and the Right Worshipful Grand Wardens.

3. The next title of honor or office in the Church is that of Very Reverend applied to Deans or heads of Cathedral Chapters. Hence Very Worshipful as designating Grand Chaplain, Grand Treasurer, Grand Secretary, Grand Director of Ceremonies, etc.

4. The unit of the parish brings us to the parallel of the Reverend parish priest and the Worshipful Master of a lodge. Each is assisted by two Wardens, and the association for many legal legal and administrative purposes of Rector and Churchwardens is as real and close as that of Master and Wardens.

5. One might here note the resemblance between the ceremony of the induction of a priest into a benefice or care of a parish and that of the installation of a Mason as Master of a lodge. In the case of the formal appointment of a Canon the resemblance is the more marked by the ecclesiastical use of the word installation, and moreover by the character of the physical act whereby the Bishop puts the new Canon into his stall with a ritual that comes with no novelty to one who has previously been installed as a Master of a lodge.

6. Reverting to the fact that of the two Primates the Archbishop of Canterbury is termed Primate of all England and the Archbishop of York the Primate of England, we may recall the time when in the earlier part of the eighteenth century there was a Grand Lodge of All England and a Grand Lodge of England also.

7. Why certain groupings of lodges in England are called Provinces may have puzzled some. Not so, however, those who as churchmen are familiar with the division of England into the Province of Canterbury and the Province of York.

- The Square, Vancouver, April 1922