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nking@freemasonry.org or nking@onramp.ca




"Born-Again"Masonry
by E. Scott Ryan M. P. S.

At the invitation of the Allied Masonic
Degrees to speak about my personal
Catholic perspectives on Freemasonry,
I'd like to freely address you with a per-
sonal catholic -small c - universal per-
spective that would include, but not be
limited to, my Catholic background.

As most of you may know, I wrote an
article entitled, "The Masonic Conspir-
acy, " which was published in The
Philalethes and will be published shortly
in the Transactions of the American Lodge of
Research, and elsewhere. I also know that
your gracious invitation to address you,
proceeds from what I wrote In Defense
of Freemasonry in response to the oft-
tried and just as often untrue conspirato-
rial aspersions that have historically and
are currently being directed against Ma-
sonry. Today, I'd like to speak in terms of
a challenge to Freemasonry to be free to
build in new ways - a challenge that I
describe in the well-known admonition
ofJesus Christ to be born again.

~ome of you may be born-again Chris-
tians, but I wish to speak to you and
others, Christian and non-Christian - as
to the challenge of becoming Born Again
Masons .

I first became personally acquainted
with Masonry from a friend whose father
and grandfather had been Masons and
who explained what Masonry was by
simply stating that it stood for "The Fa-
therhood of God and The Brotherhood
of Man. " This particular friend shared a
similar educational background, in
being Jesuit-educated at Georgetown,
but a different religious and ethnic back-
ground in being German Lutheran.
Having been educated by Jesuits, who
also had Masonic-like problems with re-
ligious bureaucracy in having once been
suspended by the Papacy, I felt more
drawn to a universal spiritual brother-
hood rather than to any particular reli-
gious tradition of others or my own.

Although most of us like to think of
ourselves as atypical in our individual-
ism, in this respect, in coming to Ma-
sonry from Catholicism, I submit to you
that I am quite typical of millions like
myself who, if they knew what Masonry
really represents, would likewise feel
drawn to Masonry as a wise choice that
they'd likely choose for themselves.

In so doing however, Catholics as a
group have no desire to become Protes-
tants-no matter how much they might
protest specific aspects of their Catholi-
cismjust as some Jews who believe in
Jesus and are therefore, Christian, have

no desire to become part of Christianity.
While that reluctance may be difficult
for some Protestants and some Chris-
tians to understand and accept; as Ma-
sons, there is no problem with our Ma-
sonic understanding, and there should
be no difficulty in accepting that reluc-
tance in building a spiritual brother-
hood. Further, beyond reluctance, Ma-
sonry allows for a fundamental and uni-
versal spiritual closeness not only for
Protestants and Catholics - as Christians
- but for Christians andJews - asJudeo-
Christians - to include all varieties of
Christians andJews and others who fun-
damentally include rather than
fundamentalistically exclude. The only
exclusion, as I described in "The Ma-
sonic Conspiracy, " ,would be a non-Ma-
sonic chosen-ness a sinful choice of ex-
cluding others as less chosen - as con-
trasted to the universal spiritual close-
ness that constitutes the spiritual COhSti-
tution of Masonry: when no man or
group is chosen (in the sinful choice of
perceiving others as less chosen than
themselves) when God is chosen by and
for all men.

Personally, I would probably qualify for
the religious acronym of "Cafeteria
Catholic" in accepting in Catholicism
only what I find acceptable. However, in
accepting that acronym for myself - and
millions of other cafeteriates - I question
how anyone in any religion can honestly
be anything other than a cafeteria con-
noisseur. . . for surely, to accept every-
thing in any one religion makes one
prone to spiritual indigestion. Regard-
less of one's palate, God is too big for the
smallness of any one religion; and God
is correctly understood by Freemasonry
as freely existing for all free men as
brothers: reGodless of any religious
claim for secular denial to the contrary.

Among Masons, I've encountered a
very wide assortment of not only reli-
gious attitudes but attitudes toward reli-
gion. At one extreme, I recall being in-
troduced to a Mason at this Lodge, a
man for whom I have immense intellec-
tual respect, who described his religious
background as having been educated at
a college where no minister, priest or
rabbi was allowed to teach; and at the
other extreme, I've met at least one Prot-
estant minister.

Rather than being offended by diver-
sity I value it and I value not only reli-
gious diversity in Masonry but, even
more, the opportunity for spiritual
brotherhood with those who have not
only different religious attitudes but rad-
ically different attitudes toward religion.
On another personal note, Dr. Paul Kerr,
who invited me here and who is of a
Protestant persuasion, has become closer
to me spiritually, as a Masonic brother,
than any religious brother, for the simple
reason that our brotherhood in Masonry
is freely chosen rather than inherited - in
the sense of being born again rather than
born into.

In reflecting Masonry, further, I would
state that while one may choose to stay
put religiously for personal and cultural
reasons, to choose to stay put spiritually
is to choose to be more chosin than cho-
sen in choosing the comfort of exclusion
over the challenge of inclusion. Lest any-
one claim that as a Christian I sound less
than Christ-centered - as one Christian
gentleman in good faith has, let me re-
spond in good faith in referring to Jesus
Christ as to the need to not only bring
comfort to the afflicted but to bring af-
fliction to the comfortable...with a spiri-
tual challenge to religious assumption.

Along with Brother Paul Kerr, I can say
the same for Brother Alex Bleimann, the
Editor of the Transactions of the Ameri-
can Lodge of Research, who along with
Brother Paul and Dr. Russell Cassell are
great humanitarians in their tireless ser-
vice to humanity. I might add that Dr.
Kerr and Brother Bleimann are respec-
tively twenty and thirty years older than
I am and Dr. Cassell almost forty years
older, but all three gentlemen are youn-
ger mentally than most of us, myself
included.

In reference to the challenge of being
born again, the need to be born again has
nothing to do with age, as evidenced by
the young Dr. Kerr (who as a senior
citizen still practices medicine along with
his duties as Pennsylvania District Gov-
ernor for Rotary International) and the
even older but always younger Brother
Bleimann (who is in his seventies has
time not only to publish more Masonic
historical research in New York, but to
assist others, such as myself, in publish-
ing their own professional research) and
Dr. Cassell (who in his eighties adminis-
ters his own clinic in California); but it
has everything to do with one's assump-
tions .

I'm using the word, assumption, I'd
like to break it down to its root meaning
- in resting more on ass than umption.
One's assumptions can be and often are
the greatest predictors of future in rest-
ing on one's past success. I've heard
more than one Grand Master, most re-
cently Brother Gary Henningsen as New
York Scottish Rite Grand Master, warn
of the danger of Masonry dying out, and
in reference to his and others' warnings,
such as those of Pennsylvania York Rite
Grand master Brother Edward Fowler,
their nay - saying to the self-satisfaction
of the status quo ante is necessary for a new
yea - saying to the future. I use the word
new because as a new Mason I see too
much of Masonry that is old - irrespec-
tive of age - in looking back to a "Born
in Blood" past rather than a "Born
Again" future.

The greatest weakness - seen in every
dying empire, good or bad - is to become
enamored of the past in escaping from
the future, when there's a present need
to go back to the future in being born
again in one's spiritual essence in new
ways.

Like Masonry, Nicodemus was well-es-
tablished and well-meaning; but while
he was one of the first to support Jesus,
he was, according to Jesus, among the
last to understand him. It was a revolu-
tionary spiritual call, rather than a reli-
gious creed that Jesus was calling out to
Nicodemus to find for himself, in being
born again.

Masonry began with Temple construc-
tion and, today, there are many beautiful
cathedrals, but they are mostly empty. If
Masonry is to be born again, it needs to
reconstruct itself according to the basic
foundation of any construction in build-
ing anew from the bottom up rather than
the top down. I know of no Temple,
Mosque, orCathedralthatwaseverbuilt
from the top down, and Masonry must
build itself up again in order to be born
again.

There is an old Russian adage that one
can never rise above one's own head.
Masonry, I submit to you, has to get its
own head together if it expects to build
upward towards future construction
rather than gaze upward in the futile
self-satisfaction of contemplating past
construction .

When I recently commented to an at-
torney friend from college that I'd be-
come a Mason, he good-naturedly but
indifferently responded by asking me
why I'd bothered to join a nineteenth
century organization. While it might be
easy to dismiss lawyers in general,his
comment confirmed what some Grand
Masters were saying as to the perception
of Masonry dying out. While the reports
of its death might be greatly exaggerated
- as Mark Twain stated in responding to
the premature reports of his own death -
these reactions cannot be easily dis-
missed. The reasons for these percep-
tions - be they exaggerated or not - de-
mand a wise response for the benefit of
ourselves as well as others; otherwise,
others as well as ourselves will be less
than wise about the born again potential
of Masonry.

In building for a spiritual future, the
first step is setting the theological corner-
stone; and in so doing I would refer to a
well known Mason, well known by non-
masons, General Douglas MacArthur.
Although General MacArthur is best
known for his statement that "old sol-
diers never die, they just fade away, " he
said something to me that is, for me, far
more significant.

In 1962 I was an Army ROTC cadet
and our commanding officer, Colonel
Roy Sherry had invited his former com-
mander in Korea - in the United Nations
police action in Korea that had nothing
to do with policing and everything to do
with war - to speak to us. As a freshman,
I was lucky enough to have my question
directed to the General in asking him
what kind of question did he regard as
the most important kind of question. He
answered by stating that every import-
ant question is ultimately a question of
theology. With all due respect to the
great French Jesuit theologian, Tiellard
de Chardin S.J., and the great German
Jesuit theologian,,, Fr. Karl Rahner S.J.,
which allJesuit stlldents like myself were
required to study, I regard Douglas Mac-
Arthur as the greatest theologian of them
all in answering my question the way he
did.

Masonry is first and foremost a theo-
logical fraternity in purporting to repre-
sent the Fatherhood of God and the
Brotherhood of Man. There may be dif-
ferent ideas - religious and political - as
to what that means or should not mean;
and I shall present my own ideas which
you are fraternally free to accept or reject
in contemplating not only what is
true....but what should be true. How-
ever, the theological premise and truth of
Freemasonry is the cornerstone from
which all building must proceed and be
founded upon in finding itself...for the
future .

In this respect, the direction of our con-
templation - in this Temple of Truth -
needs to be futuristic in considering new
ways to implement that truth in more
practicing of what needs to be preached
more, with new human ways to reach the
ultimate divine destination. If we're true
to the timeless truth of the Fatherhood of
God and Brotherhood of Man according
to the needs of our time, then Masonry
will be perceived correctly as a growing
Twenty-First Century organization,
rather than continuing to be misper-
ceived as a Nineteenth Century or older
regal remnant of the past.

In reference to the regal, the Duke of
Kent has been quoted as saying that Ma-
sonry should go about doing good in a
quiet way, and in America, as well, Ma-
sonry does go about doing good in a quiet
way; and this is precisely why Masonry
is in a bad way...no matter how much
good it does.

I'm sure the Duke is a fine man and an
outstanding Mason, but in all due re-
spect for him as a man and a Mason, I
have no respect for uneamed titles - regal
or otherwise - for a title by birth is the
antithesis of being born again. In refer-
ence to the Duke's statement, I recall the
statement of a recently deceased Ameri-
can Professor and Graduate School
Dean who'd taught at Cambridge, when
I asked him to evaluate his English grad-
uate school's university experience. His
response was that the English were very
good at what they did, but most of what
they did was mostly irrelevant.

Every culture has a problem - and God
knows the lack of culture in our Ameri-
can culture has produced immense prob-
lems - but English culture has a royal
problem in that the ideal of nobility is the
idea of no-ability. Masonry owes every-
thing to God and nothing to royalty, lest
it burden itself with furthering a regal
position of further irrelevancy rather
than furthering what's good for it-
self...and others.

Accordingly, I welcome the opportu-
nity to come to an accord with all Masons
- to include the premier English Lodge -
in outlining what l think we should be
doing while leaving the specifics of how
to do it for a future date...but not too
future date.

First, after revealing what may sound
like an English prejudice but what is
actually an English postjudice, in judg-
ing after rather than before the facts, I
would like to present another English
postjustice of mine in observing that the
English are more ecumenically free than
we, as Americans and Masons, would
like to think we are, in our land of the
free.

In order to dispel the impression that
Masonry is anti-religious or anti any
particular religion, English Masons, as I
recently read in the Transactions of
Quatuor Coronati, express their concern
that disaffected Christians - particularly
non-practicing Catholics - should rees-
tablish their church affiliation in order to
strengthen their religious foundation in
order to strengthen their belief in God.

While it is quite acceptable and even
logical for individual Masons to express
suspicion of religion in general - as man
has made it to be rather than as God
meant it to be - any particular differenti-
ation as to one religious orthodoxy being
more orthodox than another is unMaso-
nic, and constitutes the greatest un-
orthodoxy according to the ecumenical
orthodoxy of Masonry. On this matter,
feel comfortable in referring to the pre-
mier English Lodge for being premier in
an ecumenical sense rather than in any
regal nonsense. Quite clearly, as the En-
glish have made it quite clear, Protestant
Masons who are anti-Catholic are not

The Philalethes, April 1994
Masons, Christian Masons who are ani-
Semitic are not Masons, andJewish and
Christian Masons who are anti-Muslim
in a fundamentalist Judeo-Christianity
are not fundamentally Masons ..for
the future.

Second, in referring to proper morality
and to what I'd describe as the saint-sin-
ner syndrome of a Masonic " sindrome, "
puritanism produces more self-righteous
deviance than truly righteous purity. I
recall the highly publicized case a num-
ber of years ago, of a prominent Ameri-
can politician and Mason who had a
drinking problem, and one who had the
private and public misfortune to being
photographed upon falling into a water
fountain in Washington D.C. after im-
bibing more champagne than was
politique. When the opposition newspa-
per published the picture of his unfortun-
ate predicament, he was expelled, unfor-
tunately, from the Masonry.

Masonry is somewhat similar to Ca-
tholicism in according saint like degreed
status to its "holy" representatives, but
wholly puritanical in dealing with its sin-
ners, particularly its public sinners. In
dealing with the inevitability of sins and
sinners - we know from James that any
man who says he is without sin is a liar
and, therefore, sin while undesirable is
inevitable for all but a few dead saints -
Masonry should be more indulgent
(while heeding Martin Luther about in-
dulgences) in allowing for confessional-
type mechanisms for repentance via ser-
vice. When expulsion is used, in another
analogy to Catholicism, as a sacrilege in
banishing someone from the community
of the faithful (fraternity of the Brother-
hood) it should be reserved only for the
most serious Masonic sinners - those who
imbibe too much bigotry rather than too
much alcohol.

Third, theology, in my opinion, will
globalize in the direction of Masonry in
reaction to the horrors of religious, and
ethno-centricity, such that ecumenism
may eventually bring more rather than
less members. However, this can and will
only occur when Masonry learns to be
more futuristic and less regal, in being
more common in being less quiet about
about itself in new ways.

Conor Cruise O'Brien once described
Irish-Catholics as Presbyterians who go
to Mass. As one Irish-Catholic to an-
other, I would respond to Conor that
while he may not be incorrect, it would
be more correct from my experience to
describe Irish-Catholics, when they
move next door, are more likely to be-
come Episcopalians than Anglicans. I
know that from my cousin who told me
his own Canterbury Tale in becoming an
Anglican priest after his divorce...and
everyone knows the Archbishop of Can-
terbury bears an Irish Carey last name.
The Irish diplomat, O'Brien, and my
cousin, the Anglican priest, Fr. Ryan,
along with the Archbishop of Canter-
bury, Carey, show how the future of
ecumenism can confound all those who
rest on assumption - defined again by
resting more on religious ass than spiri-
tual umption.

Without waiting for the future, we ob-
serve English Anglican Masons sending
English would-be Masons back to the
Catholic Church while the supposedly
anti-English Irish Catholics are going to
the Anglican Church. What does the
Canterbury Tale tell us about old as-
sumptions?

In moving on to another assumption
in reference to being common, the Brit-
ish have a lower House of Commons,
where being common for the English is
to be lower class, while Americans strive
to be common in being all-American, in
being common to all Americans...with-
out which there is Ao success in America.
While I dislike any class system, and
particularly the English upper class as
aristocratic class parasites in their nobil-
ity of and ignoble paristocractic (para-
sitic aristocracy) nobility who belong in
the back of any class for no ability, I must
admit that the British have more class -
both a good and bad sense - than do
Americans. We have to admit to our-
selves that American entertainment and
our books that try to pass (but fail) as
literature, albeit quite successful, are
successful in the mass market by reach-
ing the lowest possible common denom-
inator. I say "possible" with trepidation
for I haven't seen the latest Arnoldesque
"I'll be back" or Clintese "Make my
day" cultural success. I'm concerned
about how low we can go on congratulat-
ing ourselves on having the world's larg-
est gross national product when critics
such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, for ex-
ample, correctly critique our " gross "
cultural products as so much "liquid ma-
nure. "

American Masonry is also a product of
what's common to America, but with a
different similarity and in a similarly dif-
ferent manner. Masonry is commonly
regarded as doing good in the American
highest common denominator of charity
- most notable among crippled children.
However, that very common strength, in
my opinion, constitutes an uncommon
weakness for it relegates MasDnry to a
charity. Further such charity could be
replaced and has been replaced by de-
cent health care systems in Europe and
elsewhere, that provide for the full needs
of crippled children as a societal respon-
sibility instead of a charitable option.
Very frankly, the limits of American so-
ciety should not be synonymous with
limiting Masonry...no matter how ap-
pealing the charity.

In facing the limits of society without
being limited by them (whether they be
in England, America or elsewhere), Ma-
sonry has to ask itself if its priority pro-
hibition against discussing politics and
religion as a unifying procedural means
to a non-divisive substantive end has not
become a de facto end policy that ends
by prohibiting a wide and wise variety of
new political religious means to its own
unifying purpose (one recent example of
which was reported upon by Brother
Allen Roberts, as being the initiative of
Brother Leon Zeldis, Editor of the Israel
Freernason, of promotingjoint meetings of
lodges composed of Jews and Arabs).

I submit to you that unless and until
Masonry applies its unifying spiritual
principle of brotherhood to the divisions
of men precisely in those areas where
men are most divided - in the myriad of
re-emerging old-new religious and polit-
ical conflicts - Masonry is not fully prac-
ticing the full implications of what it
preaches.

I know that what I've said is far easier
to say than.to do, but I also know that
what I propose is in full concordance
with the full meaning to the Fatherhood
of God and the Brotherhood on Man.
There will be problems and mistakes,
but the biggest mistake is to define the
problems of the past without redefining
ways to meet the problems of the future.
To be immobilized by the past is to lose
the opportunity to be born again - such
that one becomes a legend in one's own
time in being irrelevant to what means
most...to one's essential meaning.

Just as God is too important to be left
to religion, politics is too important to be
left to politicians. The Masonic freedoms
that were "Born in Blood" will not re-
main free, for the price of freedom is
never free unless we're "Born again" in
our freedom. A fixation on the past is a
"Born in Blood" miscarriage that is a
bloody awful abortion of a future in
being " Born Again. "

There is no infallible expert on Freema-
sonry, thank God, except an infallible
God, who can only be found in freedom
in finding truth.

Therefore, I propose that while the pro-
hibition against discussing religion and
politics at lodge meetings remain, for the
time being, in order to maintain the pro-
cedural principle of Masonic unity, the
substantive policy of the Masonic Prin-
cipal should not be limited by these pro-
cedural limits. Procedures are meant to
be means to an end, but the problem
with any tradition is not growing old with
Born A~ain Masonry
continued from page 39

when bureaucratic means replace sub-
stantive ends. Sometimes, in the short
run, caution is the better part of valor
and it's better to be safe than sorry; but,
in the long run, to be safe is to be sorry.
Masonry can be Born Again when we, as
Masons, find new ways to put the divine
in human action in such ways as to unite
rather than divide not only our selves
but, more importantly, divide mankind.
It can be done, such that the only Ma-
sonic sacrilege should be the lack of faith
in the sin of saying it cannot be done.

Jesus said his kingdom was not of this
world, but he came with God's name, as
Masonry purports to come to the world
in the name of God, to have an effect in
changing the world.

Hopefully, Masonry will rise to its own
opportunity and not step back into self-
imposed regal irrelevance or common
denominator relativity. If Masonry
doesn't act, others, hopefull~, will; and
Masonry will have missed its opportu-
nity to be true to itself in being born
again to itself.

Let's do it and let's not just be safe
before we' re just safe and sorry. . . and just
still-born rather ~han Born Again.
