                      Fraternal Review


                        (10-1-94)                      No. 701

ADVERTISING
Drove by a Catholic church with a large sign posted near the sidewalk:

                    A SPECIAL WELCOME TO
                    INACTIVE OCCASIONAL
                       CATHOLICS

Followed by a phone number or two when asking for further information. Much to
think about but will let you think about it for now.

PUBLICATIONS
SCRL Fraternal Review No. 694 mentioned the lack of exchange of Masonic
publications among Grand Lodge publication editors.  The Maryland Masonic
Research Society quoted this and added this comment:

"My GS admits to receiving a few which the GM and he glance at before placing
in the round file.  He says to subscribe to all would be cost prohibitive. Why
can't GLs exchange publications?  The benefits would outweigh the meager 
costs. I've asked the GS to save them for me, at least I can make use of them."

Why can't GLs exchange publications?  One reason.  No one asks, no one offers.

If Grand Lodge A sent their publication to Grand Lodge B, it can be literally
guaranteed B would send theirs to A.  How do we know.  We've been doing this
for years on the bread cast upon the waters would return theory and it has 
been successful beyond all belief.

PUBLIC RELATIONS
SCRL Fraternal Review No. 696 mentioned a Wisconsin soccer games project which
elicited a letter from I. Lewis Langley, SCRL member in South Carolina:

"South Carolina's Pelham Lodge No. 423 has recently completed its 4th annual
soccer tournament for girls under the age of 19. We had 48 teams participating
with several thousand relatives, coaches and other visitors.  Their letters of
appreciation make it all worthwhile.  It is a lot of work for a lodge of 65
members but we have gained new members from it and our Building Fund 
increases.

"We are working on the Shrine Temples for their assistance and hope to make it
statewide in the next few years."

I must be getting old because tears come to my eyes when I write something 
like the above.  I chided a member of one of our wealthy (over $1 million in
investments) lodges that subsidizes entertainment for their members and asked
why.  The answer:  "We are trying to get more members involved."  You can't 
buy involvement, you have to do it the old fashioned way, you have to earn it.

MASONIC EDUCATION
SCRL Fraternal Review No. 693 told of the Orator in Consuelo Lodge No. 325 and
elicited this from Douglas J. Freyburger, SCRL member, of Pasadena 
Consolidated Lodge No. 272:

"Pasadena Consolidated Lodge has an appointed honorary officer titled Lodge 
Bard who has similar duties, to deliver speeches of Masonic interest or 
anecdotes of our lodges, before or after the consolidation several years ago."

Now that we see that ConsueIo's Orator is not an isolated situation, could be
that more of our lodges would do likewise.

CHAPITER
From the Questions & Answers section of the Winter 1994 issue of The News-
letter of the Committee On Masonic Education of the Grand Lodge AF&AM of 
Canada in the Province of Ontario:

Question 62:  What is a "Chapiter?"

Answer 62:  A chapiter is the capital of a column, i.e., the ornamental head,
or crown at the top of a column; its upper surface being flat, to take the
architrave of cross-beam.

I suspect, however, that this question relates to the chapiters mentioned in 
our Lecture on the Second Tracing Board. In that case, the normal 
architectural definition would not suffice.  The two pillars in that Lecture 
were freestanding columns; they did not support any part of the structure and 
their chapiters carried an additional ornament.

The Biblical accounts in the Authorized Version of both Kings and Chronicles
speak of 'the chapiters, each five cubits high in height.' (1 Kings VII, 16; 2
Chron. III, 15).  Later in the story, 1 Kings VII, 41 speaks of 'the two bowls
of the chapiters that were on top of the two pillars,' and 2 Chron.IV, 12 uses
the word 'pommels' instead of bowls.

My Barker Bible, printed in 1616, illustrates one of the pillars, with a 
capital surmounted by an ornamental sphere and a marginal note that says 'The 
height of the chapiter or round ball upon the pillar of five cubits height.'  
We cannot be certain of the ornament at the top of the chapiter, because the 
original Hebrew word, 'Gooloth,' has many meanings, all relating to spheres to 
globes, bowls or basins.

In our English Lecture on the Second T.B., we say they were

..two spherical balls, on which were delineated maps of the celestral and
terrestrial globes, pointing our Masonry universal...

There is positively no Biblical authority for this statement. It is a piece of
gratuitous Masonic embroidery, by no means convincing, since we know that it
refers to a time when everyone believed that the world was flat!


