Posted on 01/16/2009 9:54:17 AM PST by BGHater
President-elect Barack Obama's swearing-in Tuesday will incorporate several elements out of America's Masonic past.
One-third of the signers of the Constitution, many of the Bill of Rights signers and America's first few presidents (except for Thomas Jefferson) were Freemasons, a fraternal organization that became public in early 18th-century England.
Although it became fabulously popular in America, at one time encompassing 10 percent of the population, Pope Clement XII condemned Freemasonry in 1738 as heretical. The latest pronouncement was issued in 1983 by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger - now Pope Benedict XVI - who called Masonic practices "irreconcilable" with Catholic doctrine.
Still, as the first president, George Washington had to come up with appropriate rituals for the new country. He borrowed many of them from Masonic rites he knew as "worshipful leader" of a lodge in Alexandria.
His Masonic gavel is on display at the Capitol Visitor Center. Until this inauguration, Washington's Masonic Bible - on which he swore his obligations as a Freemason - was used for the presidential oath of office. President-elect Barack Obama will use Abraham Lincoln's Bible.
The worshipful master administered the Masonic oaths. This was adapted to the president vowing to serve his country in an oath administered by the top justice of the Supreme Court.
I learned all this from Garrison Courtney, a 30-something government worker who gives Masonic tours of the District in his spare time. He is worshipful master at the Cincinnatus Lodge in Georgetown. Contrary to public perceptions of Masons being older white guys, current local membership is a racially and religiously mixed group of Gen-X men, he says.
They have, he adds, gotten a bad rap as a secretive organization.
"If people have questions, we will tell them," he says. "We're pretty open as an organization."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Doesn’t masonic tolerance and enlightenment require tolerance rather than condemnation of contrary points of view?
Why, then, would such a one be shocked when a contrary point of view is suggested?
Americanism and Catholicism can certainly coexist. Patriotism in any country that at least tolerates TRUE Catholicism is a virtue.
BTW watch out you don’t make the near-universal present error: the US Declaration of Independence is not the Constitution.
The “Americanism” that was condemned (not in name) by Leo XIII was the utopianist spirituality forwarded by some US RC clerics, certain protestant sects and, guess again: The Freemasons!
I though I was delivering news that Mel Gibson was a sedevacantist, and that’s the reaction?!
BBC special was broadcast in either 1994 or 1995.
Google etc. I see also Vatican has recently enough (2004) done an 800 page summary
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3809983.stm
which will still be wishy-washy as it was done under Bp Wojtyla.
England is “Mary’s Dowry”. Perhaps there is some semblance of a straightening there.
Doesn’t masonic tolerance and enlightenment require tolerance rather than condemnation of contrary points of view?
Why, then, would such a one be shocked when a contrary point of view is suggested?
Did I “condemn” in my posts? No, I don’t think I condemned anyone.
I expect contrary views. I love the idea we have freedom to express contrary opinions. I hope something will click with one person in the give and take. Yet I think the feeling I feel is sadness to see people so hardened to hatred.
But such is life in the big city. We all move on and eventually learn.
Brother, you got that right. Thanks for the timely word.
And there are always defrocked Masons wishing to get even with the Order. They will tell you paranoids what you want to hear, no matter if it is an outright lie.
Some brain dumping, Jack.
By definition, your rougly sketched attitude is indeed incapable of condemning anything.
So we’re at this moment in history seeing where that line of reasoning leads...
“...there are always defrocked Masons wishing to get even with the Order...”
Ah. Your detractors are cranks and charlatans, while the 16th century purveyors of the Black Legend are rock solid and disinterested analysts.
Got it.
say again all after “mumble-mumble”?
You are cut from the same cloth!
Well, if you are going to think something do it rougly—I always say.
Nam Vet
Not a criticism, just noting that there is no doubt more to your point of view than has been laid out so far.
Reductio ad Hitlerum?
Is that a concession, then, or do you just need to walk around the block until the purplish tinge leaves your complexion?
Do let us know...
Not a criticism, just noting that there is no doubt more to your point of view than has been laid out so far.
And those two are connected......how?
Well, RedLeg Duke seems to think that incessant misspelling of “auto da fe” obliterates any possibility of moral comparison or analysis of competing anti-Masonic and anti-Catholic allegations.
I see that you have quoted Albert Pike. What you may not appreciate is that Albert Pike was speaking for himself — as all Freemasons do. So when he wrote:
> “The true name of Satan, the Kabalists say, is that of Yahveh reversed; for Satan is not a black god... Lucifer, the Light Bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light...Doubt it not!”
he was giving his own opinion and not speaking on behalf of anybody else. He certainly doesn’t speak on my behalf: I think his viewpoint are, for the most part, loopy.
> No Christian can be a Freemason.
I’m a Christian and a Freemason. How do you reconcile that dichotomy?
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