FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Mysterious Freemasons

Rant Number 403 13 July 2010

Do you know anyone who is a Grand Elect Perfect & Sublime Master? Or Knight of the Sword of the East? Or Knight of East & West? Or Knight of the Pelican and Eagle, the Sovereign Price Rose Croix of Heredom? Or Grand Pontiff? Patriarch Noachite? Prince of Libanus? Chief of the Tabernacle? Knight of the Brazen Serpent? Commander of the Temple? Or Grand Elected Knight Kadosch, etcetera etcetera?

If you do, then you are a Freemason. If you don’t, well, you are not supposed to know, anyway. Freemasonry degrees are secret. Disclosing them to the un-initiates spells disaster.

What is Freemasonry? A religion? Looks like it. Freemasons have temples. Their bizarre rituals refer to altars. Each lodge has a chaplain. They invoke a Supreme Being, whom they term ‘the Architect of the Universe’. Yet, ‘Freemasonry is not a religion’, their literature asserts. Rather ‘Freemasonry is...a supporter of religion’ they contend. Strange support. Like the rope ‘supporting’ the hanged man, perhaps? Pope Clement XII accused Freemasons of being ‘depraved and perverted’.’If they were not up to mischief, they would not have so great fear of the Light’, Clement said, alluding to Freemasons’ cult of secrecy and darkness. He thus excommunicated them. A decree the Roman Church has regularly upheld and enforced. But it has not stopped Freemasons from thriving in Catholic countries.

Secrecy or not, you can buy books about Masonic ceremonies in many bookshops. On being admitted to ‘the Craft’ a man has to swear some bloodcurdling oaths. Should he violate them, he will have his throat cut across, his tongue torn out by the root and he will be buried in the sand of the sea at the lower water mark ‘where the tide regularly ebbs and flows’. Or he will have his breast laid open, his heart torn therefrom and given to the ravenous birds of the air or devouring beasts of the field as prey. Or again, he’ll be severed in two, his bowels burned to ashes and those ashes scattered over the face of the earth. Phooey! And this stuff is legal in England? Truly, the ‘Companions’ must have some powerful friends in this country. No wonder a former parishioner told me he had recurrent nightmares because of those oaths. He had resigned the Craft after finding faith in Jesus Christ and yet he confessed sometimes he was afraid...

Masonic rituals mention God. But what kind of God? Sounds like a peculiar form of Deism. A Supreme Architect and the God of Christianity are not the same thing. An architect is not all-powerful. He is constrained, limited by his material. The God of the Christian revelation is the Creator of matter, not just a geometrician, an orderer or a designer, however powerful. Moreover, no reference to Jesus Christ exists in Masonic ceremonies. Muslims might not regret that but then neither is Prophet Muhammad mentioned. Indeed, some Grand Lodges, such as that of Belgium, today even admit atheists.

Even more problematical are the names inscribed on the Holy Royal Arch, the Masonic altar which is the high point of the cult. Both the words Jehovah and Jahbulon appear on its symbolism – a triangle within a circle. Jehovah – not a Biblical name - is supposedly the name of God, and Jahbulon the Deity’s presumed description. Unfortunately Jahbulon contains the word ‘Baal’, the name of a Semitic, pagan god whose cult was anathema to Hebrew prophets like Elijah. Swearing by this peculiar Jahbulon is hardly compatible with Christian doctrine and practice. Moreover, God’s name has been revealed once for all to Christian people. It does not have to be darkly invoked in secret, occult ceremonies – and for men only.

Freemasonry gives itself an air of antiquity by claiming descent from Huram Abi, sent from Hiram, King of Tyre, to help King Solomon to build the first Temple of Jerusalem. Of Huram’s putative, mythical assassination, however, the Bible nowhere relates. It is mere fantasy. So are other arcane filiations and pedigrees, such as the Knights Templar.

You are in the presence of something very sinister here. Freemasonry outside Britain (not inside it – here it is in symbiosis with the Monarchy!) has basically been a subversive, anti-religious organisation, aiming at undermining and destroying traditional principles and hierarchies. Its role in preparing the way for the French Revolution is well-known. Many of the Westernising Young Turks who conspired to ruin the Ottoman Caliphate also were Masons. To best carry out their corrosive, termite-like work, Freemasons have camouflaged their rites and rituals in the language and symbolism of ancient, traditionalist bodies, like the Templars. An Order whose charter was drawn up by St Bernard of Clairvaux, the greatest mystic of the Middle Ages, no less. Also, many early Masons in France were Scottish Jacobites. Legitimists, exiled supporters of the Stuart claim to the throne, many of them were Roman Catholics, opposed to the Hanoverian usurpers. They would never have dreamt of the serpent’s eggs they were unwittingly helping to lay...

In all my parishes I discovered a few Masons. (In Turkey they were especially numerous.) Three times I was invited to join the Craft. I politely demurred. My reasons were doctrinal, of course, but also qualitative. Considering the kind of old farts the ‘Companions’ in question were, I had to ask myself whether I wanted to spend my free time in such company. The answer was a definite, resolute ‘no’.

Unlike the Roman Church, the Church of England has got along with Masons pretty well. Partly out of snobbery but also, to be fair, because English and Scottish Freemasonry never ran anti-Christian campaigns. Many Bishops and Deans are openly in the Craft. I possess a booklet ‘Freemasonry and Christianity: Are they compatible?’The result of a Working Group established by the General Synod of the C of E and presided by the late, lamented Dr Margaret Hewitt, a wonderful lay woman from the Exeter Diocese. She reported ‘a number of very fundamental reasons to question the compatibility of Freemasonry and Christianity’. I agree. No one took the slightest notice of the report, predictably. It seems the General Synod only cares about dismantling Anglicanism, not in building it up.

To end on a light note. The mysterious signs, grips and passwords used as proof of Masonic membership are actually unmysterious – you can read them online. However, the first time a Turkish Mason gave me ‘the grip’ I was rather puzzled. Later, on learning what it signified, I was relieved. ‘Oh, that’s what it was, was it? Good. I just thought the fellow was queer.’

Revd Frank Julian Gelli