STB-MA49         May 1949

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 unGodlike.

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 bc 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 Seald 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
scape-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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