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HILLIARD.TXT      p3        Ap 91

The President's Corner

by John Mauk Hilliard, FPS

Those Freemasons who care about the
traditional ritual heritage of the Ancient
Craft in general, and the York Rite in
particular have recently been enduring
the calls for York Rite change which have
been repeatedly made by a Past Grand
High Priest of California, Most Ex.John
R. Nocas. We have not suffered his com-
ments gladly. The latest salvo in this vap-
id and shallow formula for York Rite
survival was made in the Winter, 1990
issue of the Royal Arch Mason magazine in
an article on page 362 entitled: "The
York Rite Is Doomed, Unless The Coun-
cil Is Dropped!" Companion Nocas is
convinced that the ritual canon of the
York Rite is too unwieldy, too arcane,
and too complex to bring its message
effectively to modern Freemasons, and
that it needs to be severely pruned of its
irrelevancies and inconsistencies. He
further suggests that as an institution,
the York Rite needs to be simplified and
streamlined principally by the elimina-
tion of the Cryptic Rite as an integral
element of the degree system.

In suggesting these changes, Nocas fol-
lows an increasing trend among North
American Grand Body leaders, many of
whom are anxious to modernize the
Craft by eliminating those portions of the
Masonic rituals and traditions which
they regard as unfashionable, politically
embarrassing, or socially unattractive.
They appear to believe that reduced rit-
ual and streamlined institutions, coupled
with aggressive advertising and public
relations campaigns will restore Ameri-
can Freemasonry to both its large num-
bers and its cultural prominence of yes-
teryear. They tend to value Freemasonry
for its institutional aspects: they focus on
its membership numbers, its vast chari-
table establishments and programs, its
buildings, and its political, honors, and
management structures. These "institu-
tionalists" rules the American Craft,
and it is my sad judgment that their view
of the Craft will eventually prevail, if
only because they dominate the political
mechanisms of Masonry, and Grand
Lodge traditions of autocratic and
cliquish rule make it extremely difficult
to mount an effective grass-roots opposi-
tion. American Freemasons are encour-
aged to slavishly and sheepishly follow
their leadership cadres, and even mild
dissent is not happily tolerated by the
Masonic establishment.

Those of us who are "traditionalists"
believe, with Albert Pike (the celebrated
founder of the modern Scottish Rite)
that: "the chief obstacle to the success of
Masonry is the apathy and faithlessness
of her own selfish children. " We joyously
celebrate the great ritual traditions,
forms, and orders that have descended to
us from the labors of our Masonic for-
bearers of the 17th, 18th, and l9th cen-
turies. We are inclined to regard the
complexity and profusion of the great
degree systems as being a splendid venue
for personal and communa, adventures.
We relish the thought, and the spirit in-
herent in the work, as well as the literary,
historical, and cultural consciousness
and awareness embodied in it. We hap-
pily regard the degrees of the York Rite
(and other appendant bodies and orders)
as being a great personal journey among
infinite and random riches. These treas-
ures are not easily accessible, and our
ancestors did not mean them to be. They
are not for the mass of men, nor were
they originally so designed. Rather, they
are for the favored few who have the
patience and fortitude to search out the
mysteries they hold. We traditionalists
rejoice in Freemasonry's tradition of se-
crecy and elitism. We believe that the
men who need to find us, by and large
will find us. We seek those special minds
which are not locked into the terrninal
trendiness of this strange modern indus-
trial and technological world in which we
are all imprisoned. Masonry is a fecund
pathway through the gardens of the past.
There is a schism in thought and atti-
tude growing in modern America,n Free-
masonry between this small band of tra-
ditiona,ists and the substantial number
of institutionalists. Where it will lead I
know not, but its implications for the
future of the American Craft are pro-
found. I hope some accommodation may
ultimately be reached wherein those of us
who wish to preserve and work the tradi-
tional forms, symbols, and rituals will be
allowed the means to do so within the
body of a "pluralistic" Grand Lodge
institutional format. That structure
would require more flexibility than
American Grand Bodies have tradition-
ally demonstrated in permitting differing
ritual traditions to coexist side by side.
Given classical Grand Lodge rigidities
such as insistence on "standard" or "ap-
proved" rituals, I am not sanguine about
the future.

Nor am I sanguine about the outcome
of the plans of Nocas and his ilk. They
will succeed in stripping the Craft of
much of its complexity, and indeed,
much of its mystery and uniqueness. It
will become the Lions Club in aprons: an
institution dedicated to public charities
and good works, and possessed of a ves-
tigial and increasingly ignored ritual.
Americans will not flock to such an insti-
tution. There are already a host of such
institutions that perform these voluntary
private and public charities far more ef-
fectively than can the Craft.

Nocas' suggestions constitute, in the
aggregate, more a dismantling than a
change in the York Rite. He attacks the
New Testament allegory of the Vineyard
in the closing of the Mark Master Mason
Degree, presumably because it is incon-
sistent with the prevailing Old Testament
setting of the bulk of that degree. He is
one of those Masons who insist on abso-
lute historical, literary, and scientific
consistency in our rituals. How shallow
is this concept: our rituals are founded in
the realms of myth, fantasy, and imagi-
nation. To bind them with steel bands of
literalism is to suffocate them. He desires
to eliminate the Veils in the Holy Royal
Arch Degree, and thus sacrifices those
great symbols of the biblica, covenants
between God and Man. Nocas feels that
the Charges and the Lectures should be
eliminated, or "read by the best
speakers," instead of asking a gifted
companion to rise to the sacrifice of his
time and energy that his brethren might
glory in a great work splendidly deliv-
ered. He willingly sacrifices the Past
Master, Royal and Select Degrees on the
altar of efficiency so that casual Masons
might move with even more unseemly
speed to that pinnacle of Masonic life, the
fezzes and the amiable (if occasionally
lunatic) antics of the Shrine. Whatever
special dimensions to the noble story of
the Solomonic and Temple Degrees are
embodied in the Cryptic Rite, Nocas
would willingly withhold from the minds
and hearts of generations of future York
Rite Craftsmen.

I am somewhat sympathetic to his com-
plaint about the demands of being a York
Rite leader. Activity in three chair sys-
tems, including one's Lodge, is a drain-
ing experience for those of us who aspire
to leadership in the York Rite. But the
institutional adjustments necessary to ef-
fect some degree of organizational unity
among the three bodies in order to make
service more efficient and less exhausting
can be done without crippling and fun-
damentally impairing the heritage re-
presented by the York Degrees. If we
surrender the means to persuasively and
powerfully transmit the rituals of the An-
cient Craft and the York Rite, with all
their mighty images and striking sym-
bols, then there is simply no reason for
the York Rite to exist at all. Let us give
up the whole thing in its entirety, and Join
the Jaycees.


The Philalethes, April, 1991
