It Isn't Our Money
No Matter What We Might Think
A bit of fiction to start us off:
It has become evident to the members of Magnum Lodge No. 357 that the Lodge no longer has a possible future. Lodge elections are no longer elections, rather they are an exercise in finding the easiest man to guilt into taking the East, using the argument that unless he does so, the Lodge will have to turn in its Charter.
Three to five Masons generally show up for Stated Meetings, but even that can’t be counted upon, and occasionally the Lodge has to rely upon visitors just to open on the Master Mason Degree. After those meetings, at which the Lodge struggles to survive as a shadow of its former self everyone is depressed. Visitors notice that no one even claps anymore when the Master raps the gavel for the final time.
Magnum Lodge No. 357 does however hold some assets. It has a few bucks in the bank, and it still owns its building free and clear, even though that building hasn’t been maintained in many years.
Eventually it’s decided that the building must be sold. The sale goes through, but much of the historical records and artifacts of the Lodge are lost, because no one thinks to get them out of the building before the sale closes. The new owner keeps the ivory gavels for himself, everything else is sold for pennies to a thrift shop.
The Lodge, sale proceeds in hand, now decides what to do with this extra money. It is, after all, their money to do with as they please, or so it seems to their way of thinking.
The first thing the members of Magnum Lodge No. 357 do is vote to use Lodge funds to buy themselves Life Memberships. Life Memberships that they know can be transferred to whatever Lodge they eventually merge or affiliate with.
They then give half of the money to an appendant body, a body that their wives and friends belong to, and a large portion of the remainder to another organization in town, an organization with no connection to Freemasonry, but which shares much overlapping membership with the Lodge.
They leave very little for the Lodge they consolidate with, not intending to actually become active members there, and not wanting to lose control of the funds.
This is all perfectly reasonable in the minds of the members of Magnum Lodge No. 357 because it is afterall, ‘their money.’
The problem with the above story is of course that it is not ‘their money.’ Morally (and first and foremost Freemasonry is a moral society) that money belongs to the men who donated it decades and decades, even centuries ago.
The current members of Magnum Lodge No. 357 haven’t raised more money than was spent each year in all the years that they have been Masons. They have kept the lights on in the building, but no more than that.
Their building, was built, and paid for, by men who have all been dead for one hundred years. The little money left in the Lodge investment accounts was raised by men who have been dead since the 1970’s.
The living members of Magnum Lodge No. 357 were unable to do anything to build the assets held by the Lodge due to a lack of membership, age, and a malaise caused by the sorry state of the Lodge.
They have no moral claim on any of the Lodge’s assets.
Yet they allow those assets to be wasted by not removing them from the building prior to its sale. They vote to use those assets to personally benefit themselves by voting to require the Lodge to pay for their own Life Memberships. They give away most of the rest of the money, not to another Lodge, or a Masonic charity, but to other organizations that they or their family members happen to be members of. They starve the Lodge they merge with, of both funds that should have gone to that Lodge, and of assistance, never planning to be active.
To be clear, when this happens, it is today’s Masons stealing from the Masons who came before them.
The money given in support of Magnum Lodge No. 357 one hundred or fifty years ago was given to support Freemasonry, and its good works in the community. It wasn’t given to be squandered, spent for personal benefit, or given away to other organizations. It was intended for Freemasonry, and morally, the Masons of today have no right to waste it, or divert it away.
Unfortunately, this is happening, far too often in Freemasonry today. In some cases Masons of today seem to have no problem morally stealing money from the Masons of yesteryear.
This must stop. We must recognize that our Lodge building isn’t only our Lodge building. Morally it also belongs to the men who built it and paid for it. We have no right to squander it away. We must always strive to be excellent stewards of the assets that were left to us by the Masons of so long ago.
When we refuse to be such, when we spend Lodge moneys for our own benefits, squander them, or give them to organizations outside of the Fraternity, we are violating a sacred trust, and we must be held accountable.
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My mother lodge in Portland OR sold its building many years before I joined. We tried merging with another lodge, but for reasons I won’t go into here, we were forced to split again. With the money from the sale of the building, and wise counsel, we invested it. Today it is a substantial amount of money we have and we rent the lodge space from another lodge.
At our last officer’s retreat one of our PM’s shared a brilliant piece of insight: that we still have a lodge building. It doesn’t exist in the physical world, but rather as currency. It still must be maintained, it still must be cared for, and we want it to exist for future Masons to use. Like alchemists, should we choose at some future time to transmute the building from its metaphysical form, back to its physical shape, we can do that. We are simply the stewards of that building in whatever shape it takes.
Very well stated, all a lodge needs to do is read our Washington Masonic code the rules and regulations on this matter are up front and forthright