Free Inquiry
Why would any Freemason try to limit what another Mason can say or read or hear?
I’m not in a position to know all the details, but that’s OK, because I don’t need to know the details in order to properly express my views with this essay.
I also don’t have a vested interest in any of the groups involved. The historical and the current spat have absolutely no impact upon my own Masonic experience.
Those two things said…
Chris Hodapp at Freemasons for Dummies is reporting that:
-A Lodge in Texas has scheduled an English Freemason to come and present an educational lecture to it about the Rectified Scottish Rite (an invitational Masonic order, not to be confused with the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite) and A.E. Waite (an English Freemason, occultist, and author most well known for the Waite-Smith Tarot deck.)
-The leader of the Rectified Scottish Rite here in the United States objected that someone was going to talk about the Rectified Scottish Rite, and wrote to the Grand Master of Texas, asking that he prohibit the Lodge from letting the lecture take place.
-Lastly, Brother Hodapp reports that the Grand Master has not taken the action requested by the Rectified Scottish Rite, and that the lecture will go forward as planned.
You can read about the whole thing here:
Grand Priory of America (CBCS) Tries To Halt Texas Educational Lecture
Whew!
All of that backstory out of the way, I can get on with my point!
Within the confines of our Masonic obligations, propriety, and civility every Freemason has the right to discuss every aspect of our Ancient Craft, share his views of it, and make those views known to any other Mason who consents to hear them.
No Masonic topic or opinion is somehow taboo, again, within the confines of our obligations, propriety, and civility.
If the leader of a Masonic organization believes that another Mason has somehow misrepresented the facts or may misrepresent the facts about his organization, his proper recourse is to make the facts as he understands them known. It is never proper to try and censor Masonic opinions that one disagrees with.
To attempt to censor is quite simply a violation of the very essence of Freemasonry.
Freemasonry is a quest for truth.
But that truth looks different for every Mason.
This is because the truth we discover is found deep within ourselves.
If we are unwilling to allow things we disagree with to be said, or written, we lose the ability to grow, because we only can grow when challenged with new material. And a lack of growth is death. It is the opposite of the Masonic quest for Light.
When I first created Emeth and opened up a wide ranging comment section, I received calls from Masonic Leaders to censor the heck out of it. Because you know, someone was saying mean things about Grand Lodge. I ignored that nonsense, and eventually those calls for censorship came to an end.
Very recently though, a Masonic friend from another Jurisdiction asked me some questions about a long extinct Lodge in my Jurisdiction that I didn’t know the answers too. So, I condensed those questions to the essence and posted it on Facebook thinking that it could lead to interesting discussion. A leader of my Jurisdiction threw an obvious temper tantrum, because, apparently, how dare I question the official story, published decades and decades after that extinct Lodge’s demise?
A call for censorship, a call to somehow limit discussion, never comes from any place other than fear. Those who make these calls do so because they are either afraid to know themselves, or they do know, don’t like what they know, and fear that others will discover what it is that they know.
But it is always from a place of fear, unreasonable fear, cowardly fear.
And these calls for Masonic censorship must always be opposed by Freemasons.
For anything less denies us all from finding the truth and the Light.
The whole "official line" policing thing has always puzzled me. I just don't get it. Gatekeeping is it's own weird pathology. The search for Truth demands a badger's eye view, multiple lenses of analysis and generosity of Spirit. Often it's a stereoscopic picture.
Cops and lawyers know this - eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable because perception and perspective are two very different critters. The hard physical evidence can also be contradictory until you take it down to its most basic elements.
Looking for the historical story is one of the most interesting endeavours to me, because once the dust settles, the outlines of events remain if you know how to look at it. But in some cases, we'll just never know the nitty-gritty of the facts.
In all instances, for me personally, the *human* story is the most interesting and engaging.
The idea of suppressing free and open communication, other than politics and religion, among Masons defeats the whole purpose of convening as Masons. Nobody has a complete understanding of what exactly was on the minds of our Masonic forebears when speculative lodges were first created, but I'll bet a paycheck that it wasn't absolute conformity to what some bygone brother once wrote or said, nor was it that we should take sides and silence anyone we disagree with.
I'm a recovering CFO and I often described myself as my company's chief skepticism officer, not because I longed to be anyone's bubble buster, but because I wanted to test their ideas and plans to make sure we'd covered everything before we made financial commitments. And it takes a devil's advocate to do that. I didn't agree with every idea or plan that was presented to me, but by the time my review was done I fully understood what was being presented and, if I say so myself, I think at times I strengthened the plan. That same thought process can be applied to any controversial topics discussed among Masons.
And before I close, I particularly noticed one thing you wrote: "... someone was saying mean things about Grand Lodge ...". Was that me? If if was I hope you know me well enough to know that I at least try to offer observations in the most friendly manner, and with the intention of strengthening Grand Lodge.