Rise!! Undead thread!
Why would a fraternity who is so respectful of folk’s faith accept members whose faith teaches (rightly or wrongly) that they shouldn’t join? I think Masonry would do itself a favour in the relations department if it refused membership to those whose faith doesn’t want its members joining.
Freegards
Like not allowing someone who’s religion doesn’t allow them to eat pork should be refused a membership to BJ’s or CostCo because they sell pork?
The topic of Masonry raises several issues:
I note the irony that the Catholic Church excoriates Masonry in very "fundamentalistic" terms . . . terms it usually condemns, especially in rural American Protestants. In fact, the condemnation of "salvation by works" in the lodge sounds very much like Fundamentalist Protestant condemnations of Catholicism. Further, the Catholic Church itself seems absolutely riddled with the rationalism, indifference, and naturalism attributed here to Masonry. Why is Catholicism "fundamentalist" when it comes to Masonry but "Masonic" when it comes to Fundamentalist Protestantism? I don't understand how the Church can condemn Fundamentalist Protestant attitudes as "bigotry" if it shares them; still less do I understand why Catholicism retains this "fundamentalist" attitude on the single issue of Masonry.
Masonry itself is also shot through with contradictions. On the one hand we have a brotherhood birthed in the deism of the "age of reason." On the other we have this same rationalistic brotherhood engaging in mystical rituals and teaching such "irrational" doctrines as immortality of the soul and resurrection of the body. But then, occultism always seems by the side of "rationalism" (witness the Left's simultaneous dedication to both eighteenth century European enlightenment rationalism and the religious myths and superstitions of "indigenous pipples").
Before closing, I must remark on the historical Anti-Masonic movement in America. American Anti-Masonry (the movement that originated in opposition to the French Revolution and eventually ran William Wirt for President in 1832) was a very a-typical kind of anti-Masonry. It was not at all identified with conservative Catholicism but to the contrary had its greatest strength in those very areas of the country and population segments which were most stridently anti-Catholic. American Anti-Masonry was in fact a product of the same "Puritan religious ferment" on which the Confederates and their apologists loved to blame all the evils of Yankee society.
A final irony is that Anti-Masonry, like temperance/prohibitionism, is an example of "ideological drift," having begun on one side of the political spectrum and ended up on the opposite side. Just as the anti-liquor crusade was originally a left wing reform movement (just like women's rights, world peace, and abolitionism) that became a symbol of the "reactionary" rural South, so Anti-Masonry began as the nation's first "red scare" and eventually became a unique form of American anti-clericalism and anti-aristocracy (Masonry being America's quasi-official liturgical religion and ruling class), including "radicals" like Thaddeus Stevens.
This whole thing is a fascinating topic.