American Masonry and Catholic Education

By Rev. Michael Kenny, S.J.
International Catholic Truth Society No.ctsa013 (1919)

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An exposition of Masonic activities in education, read at the Catholic Educational Convention, San Francisco, California, 1918, and addressed in substance to the Creighton University Summer Session

Masonry, the Central Antagonizing Force

For the purpose of this paper Catholic education is regarded as that formal system of public instruction which imparts the truths and duties of revealed religion in conjunction with secular knowledge and in due proportion. To all Catholic education, whether in or out of school, there are now, as always, diverse forces working in unconscious or conscious opposition, verifying Christ's warning to those He commissioned to "go and teach," that the world would hate them as it had hated Him; but this opposition has converged more directly and unitedly on the Catholic school, or rather on religion in the school. As only the Catholic faith elicits the sacrifices needed to maintain such schools, it happens that they alone bear all the brunt of forces hostile to religion. Many such forces are now in active opposition through the land, e.g., the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations and their like, which are expending vast millions yearly on higher education and the production and upkeep of educators, always with the condition, expressed or implied, that not a cent be diverted to any educational plan or purpose of a religious character, and that from the institutions financed through these sources religion shall be barred. In practice the Catholic religion alone is barred. These forces, supplied with inexhaustible monies and with all the brains that money can hire or buy, are operating through a thousand avenues and agencies against Catholic education. Their pervasive antagonism works quietly, with no formal profession of hostility, yet none the less efficiently that they choose to cut the ground under our feet rather than alarm us by cutting at our heads.

But in eager sympathy with these forces, and largely their inspiration, is another and more powerful force that has no such reserve. It is a cunning organization noted for its secrecy, but it no longer makes a secret of its purpose to strike at religious education, head, heart and center, and for that end to destroy the Catholic school. This is the Society of Freemasonry, acting in ordered co-operation with numerous allied societies.

"Let Sleeping Dogs Lie"

Not a few earnest Catholics would endorse the advice of a well-known Catholic author when the writer of this paper was exposing Masonry in "America": "Better let sleeping dogs lie." An able and zealous member of the National Board of the Knights of Columbus wrote later in the same strain. Both of these gentlemen had Masonic friends, as in fact have I, and knew Masons who would help them on occasions just as well as Catholics or better, and of such I have known not a few; Masons also who were unaware of special anti-Catholic bigotry in Masonry. Therefore they conclude, Masonry cannot be so terrible and better not stir it up and make it so. This had been somewhat my view until I studied the records of American Masonry today: their forty-odd monthly magazines, the books they publish, use and advertise, the means their chiefs employ to inoculate the common Masonic herd with the animus of real Masonic purpose; their political activities and intrigues, particularly in Washington, against all Catholic interests, but especially educational interests; and, therefore, to the advice, "Let sleeping dogs lie," I answered: "The trouble is that they do. The Masonic leaders do lie, but they don't sleep."

Just now they are more awake than at any period of our history since 1830, when an American political party was formed to effect their overthrow, and several States prohibited them by law. They are more effective now by secret intrigue, by the universal Masonic "pull," than they ever were by open politics. They are more virulent because more thoroughly imbued with the Masonic spirit; and the present crisis has delivered to their hands a grand opportunity for universalizing that spirit and virulence. This, American Masonry has grasped in a manner that greatly concerns all American Catholics, but especially Catholic educators.

Masonry's Origin and Purpose

Freemasonry was founded in 1717 in a London tavern on the basis of four moribund societies of working Masons, the remains of one of the great Catholic guilds which the Stuarts had utilized as a medium for communication with their British partisans. When the house of Hanover was established two ministers (a French Huguenot and a Scotch Presbyterian) drew up the ritual and constitution for a philosophical and benevolent society of speculative Masons working not in mortar but on minds. The Stuart "secret" became "the light"; God and Christ were transformed to "The Grand Architect of the Universe"; and for the old Catholic charge of working Masons, "Be true to God and Holy Church and use no error or heresy," they substituted: "Adhere to that religion in which all men agree"; which has now simmered down to Pantheism, the logical common denominator. Jew, pagan and Christian were equally eligible, but in England, the Bible and the Grand Architect were retained as Landmarks. Not so in France, where in 1721 Masonry attracted the Voltairian elements, who soon made it what it is today, here as well as elsewhere, a rationalistic society designed to organize humanity on a purely materialistic basis: a religion for the destruction of religion. This, together with its blind obedience exacted to chiefs unknown, and its inscrutable secrecy and deceptive disguises and consequent menace to State and Church, was the ground of condemnation in 1738 by Clement XII, as by all subsequent Pontiffs. The Protestant rulers of Holland, Sweden and Berne had anticipated him. Leo XIII accurately defines its purpose as, "The overthrow of the whole religious, political and social order based on Christian institutions, and the establishment of a new state of things according to their own ideas and based in its principles and laws on pure Naturalism." And this is its purpose here, proclaimed openly for years in its leading organs, but now as never before made a definite part of its program in every rite and jurisdiction.

Introduced from England in 1729, American Masonry remained largely convivial in character, often of a bibulous type, till the Scottish Rite of Perfection was imported from France and a Supreme Council of 33 continental degrees was erected in Charleston, S.C., in 1801.

The American "Scottish Rite"

This is an elaborate system graded on ecclesiastical models, "on the plane of its great opponent the hierarchy," in blasphemous imitation of sacramental rites, cunningly contrived to attain by concerted secret interference in society and governments, the grand Masonic design of establishing a creedless universal democracy, which Masonry would guide and govern. Adopted in 1782 and put into operation during and after the French Revolution, this system was perfected by the American Supreme Grand Master, Albert Pike, acclaimed "the greatest name in Masonry," who built up an autocratic government like the French Grand Orient and wove into its degrees and ritual allegories and symbols from Kabbalism, Gnosticism and sundry pagan and Christian cults. It includes a complete system of worship, with elaborate rituals for Baptism, Communions, Funerals, Blessings, Dedications, Maundy Thursday celebrations, and other solemn services. The whole is designed to impress on the initiate that Masonry alone is the true Light enlightening the world, a philosophy complete in itself and a religion containing all that is true in all religions with none of their impurities; that "the conception of a Deity outside of reason is an idol and a phantom"; that nature is God, and Satan is not a person but a force, the instrument of liberty or free will; that the true Deity is man himself, the highest expression of bi-sexualism, which is the seed of all Deity; that religion originated in the sex mysteries and morality follows the law of bi-sexualism, of which phallic worship is the true interpretation — and much more of this kind that is unmentionable; that the Pope of Rome is "the enemy and curse of humanity"; that "Enlightenment, not benevolence," is the purpose of Masonry, and the primal object of this systematic enlightenment is "to rid the world of the Roman incubus," of that tyranny over conscience and free thought, that religious despotism and fanaticism and bigotry of the priesthood which murdered Christ and Jacques de Molay. When the candidate reaches the Kadosh 30th degree he tramples on the Papal Tiara, "the symbol of spiritual thraldom."

"The Method of Masonry"

All this enlightenment is administered gradually. To lead men back from Christianity to heathen philosophy and paganism, the deadly poison is dealt out in graduated doses. The Kadosh 30th degree candidate is told that in the first three or Blue Degrees he was intentionally misled by false interpretations. He was first led to believe that Masonry is Christian, but later that it is an improvement on the teachings of Christ. "Part of the symbols are displayed to the initiate," says Pike in "Morals and Dogma of the Scottish Rites"; "it is not intended that he shall understand them, but it is intended that he shall imagine that he understands them." Their true explication is intended for "the Adepts, the Princes of Masonry" who are instructed that only by study of Masonic symbolism does man absorb "the light" and acquire "a creative soul"; that Christ and Chrishna and Buddha are all one, and the Cross is merely an emblem of nature, through which the Deity runs pantheistically, attaining perfection in man, every man being a Divine Incarnation; and so on in the perverted double-meaning style which the heresy of Modernism has made familiar, and allows each to twist what meaning he pleases from any dogma, however sacred. The Bible is exhibited; but Pike explains that the Old Testament is merely a symbol of Material Nature and the New Testament of Human Nature, and I.N.R.I. is translated, "Igne Natura Renovatur Integra" ("By Masonic Fire All Nature is renewed"). Leo XIII admirably summarizes the whole scheme in "Humanum Genus": "By skillfully veiling their pagan ideas under the terminology of Christian doctrine, many who thought themselves serving the Lord Jesus Christ were led unconsciously into the pagan cults; and this is the method of Masonry."

Supreme Commander Pike continues: "Masonry conceals its secrets from all except the Adepts and Sages, or the Elect, and uses false explanations and interpretations of its symbols to mislead those deserving to be misled." This will explain in part why many Masons see no evil in Masonry. Their failure to qualify for High Degrees, or to take them seriously, or to study the philosophy of Masonry, explains the rest. Hence the Masonic organs are continually rebuking such brethren, who enter for business, social or political advantage, as "sheep-walking, knife-and-fork Masons," urging them to study its peculiar enlightenment and thus become, like their Latin Grand Orient brothers, moulders of thought and action and enlighteners of the world. These urgings have had effect, but just now they are receiving response beyond Brother Pike's brightest hopes.

Pike's Plan Now in Operation

He did not live to realize them. In 1888 Adrian Lemmi, the Hebrew who ruled Italian Masonry, requested Pike to organize all American Lodges to unite in open protest and action with Continental Masonry against "the Vatican and Clericalism, for the progress of humanity." Lemmi was the Masonic successor of Mazzini, with whom in 1870 Pike had drawn and executed a plan "to create a Supreme Rite, which will remain unknown, and to which we will call by selection high Masons of our choice, imposing upon them the most absolute secret towards their brethren of the ordinary rites. This new Rite will be the unique universal center of action, the most powerful for direction just because most unknown." This mysterious all-controlling council is known as the Black Rite. Pike called it the Palladium. Its control was then divided between Rome and Charleston, but now is centered in Rome with its American executive in Washington. To the request of Lemmi, who in 1888 divided with him the Black Rite's direction, Pike replied regretfully that he could not "induce our Masonry to take united action against the Papacy," because among other reasons, "neither of our political factions, the Democratic or the Republican, dares to resist the Roman Church's encroachments or warn the people of its insidious influences, which are incessantly making rotten the foundations of our free government. Neither faction feels that it can afford to lose the Catholic vote."

But Pike's insidious influence worked towards the goal he had in view. The A.P.A. movement was then started, and it is significant that every anti-Catholic Association, whether A.P.A., Guardians of Liberty, Knights of Luther ("Knights of Prussia" is a high S.R. Degree), the Menace and Watsonian dark brotherhoods, is invariably manned by Masons. Each movement acted and interacted on the other and Masonry made rapid progress in numbers and enlightenment. After the anti-Masonic agitation of 1830, which caused Masonry to be prohibited in many States and forced 3,000 lodges to surrender their charters, Masonry slunk into obscurity. But the leaders dressed their ranks and under Pike's vigorous government they had increased to 600,000 in 1878 and have since trebled that number. They boast now of a two million membership, 300,000 of the Scottish Rite and 1,700,000 of the Blue Lodges. Counting the large numbers they have inveigled since our entrance in the war they hardly exaggerate. Two million men of voting age, all oath-bound in absolute obedience for purposes hostile to Catholicity, even though unknown, form a formidable menace, if they can be relied upon to execute them. They could not be generally relied on in Pike's day; but they can now in large proportion. The anti-Roman atmosphere has been intensified, the general Masonic temperament has been keyed for opportunity, and the opportunity has arrived.

Modeled on the Grand Orient

In 1878 the French Grand Orient, declaring that Masonry is a progressive philosophic institution for the search after truth, the study of morality, and human solidarity, with absolute liberty of conscience, expunged from its Ritual the Grand Architect and the Bible and all allusions to religion. The English and German lodges, pronouncing this action atheistic, broke off relations with the Grand Orient, and the American Blue Lodges followed their example. But not so the Scottish Rite, which, retaining the Grand Architect as representing God or Satan, love or force, and the Bible as symbolic of nature and reason, kept up cordial relations with the Grand Orients of the world. This Rite has long dominated the Blue Lodges, most of their Grand Masters being also high in the Scottish Rite; and both have persistently declared in their leading monthly organs that the Grand Orient is the model for all Masonry, in principle and in practice.

We know the practices of the Grand Orients in France and Portugal and Mexico; their robbery and desecration of churches and religious property and persons, their ruthless trampling on fundamental rights, their expulsion of Christian teachers from the schools, and their expunging of God's name from the textbooks, as they had already expunged Him from their Rituals. Now, during all this time, all the American Masonic organs and leaders gave them unqualified support. The New Age of Washington, the official organ of the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite 33rd degree, has been and is as virulent and brazenly mendacious as the Menace, and as urgent for the destruction of Catholicism here as is the Grand Orient in France. There in the seat of our National Government, where there are thirty lodges of 10,000 members and where in every Government department they have besides established a special Masonic Club, this supreme organ, which is circulated in every lodge in the land and gives the keynote to the forty minor organs, is not only vilifying the Catholic Church in every number, but is demanding its destruction as insistently as the Grand Orients of Portugal and France. In May of this year 1918 The New Age repeats from a former number: "The Papacy and Democracy, how incongruous the juxtaposition... Before the insistent liberty of today, before the sovereign dignity of emancipated nationality, the Papal Court stands as practically the last autocracy left on earth. Before the world can be made safe for democracy the aristocratic Church must be cleared away."

The Scottish Rite Program

And the Scottish Rite must do it: "Church teaching shows but empty forms and musty dogmas. Scottish Rite Masonry is the Light-way on the horizon of all time, the high-school of patriotism, the Alma Mater of citizenship; her mission and aim to turn aside the missiles of Misrule and Rome Rule. All of humanity, all of divinity is depicted by her." For, says The New Age, February, 1918: "Masonry is more than a religion; Masonry is religion. Jew, Gentile, Buddhist, Mahometan, Theosophist, Christian Scientist, and all of the other Ists and Isms of Religion are embraced in and spring from Masonry. Masonry is the Mother Church, existing before there were Popes or prelates, Romanists or Protestants," and only in the Masonic Temples will "final universal brotherhood be accomplished by bringing into them the source from which all religion sprang. When we have finished the war which Rome and the tricky Jesuits have started and which Uncle Sam is going to end, together with Roman Catholicism, let us have but one Church and that church the Universe; so that the world will be safe for democracy and the Roman Hierarchy shall cease poking its nose into the affairs of men and nations."

The average priest is not so much to blame, "seeing that the Jesuits have supervised his education" (April, 1918) "just as they want to supervise all the United States education so that the people may know nothing but what the Roman Hierarchy desires them to know." Their Scottish Rite experience makes these people really believe that there is an inside Catholicism different from that communicated to the people. The June, 1918, New Age condemns German Masonry as spurious because it is Christian — which is only true in as far as Jews and heathens are excluded; and in May it approved heartily the Bolsheviki decree abolishing religious ownership of property and religious teaching in all schools, and therewith the similar action of the French Republic, deeming both peculiarly lenient.

Destroy the Constitution to Destroy Rome

In fact, as we shall see, it is conducting a propaganda to establish here a like regime; and officially, for it was this official mouthpiece that the Supreme Council 33rd degree commanded in October, 1913, "To express and breathe the spirit of the Scottish Rite Masonry upon the affairs of the people of the Nation, relative to social, philosophical, political, and altruistic problems of the day." This is really the Grand Orient program. The New Age explains "political" as "including those questions which concern the foundations on which the Government is built." To preserve these foundations is indeed a commendable activity of any society; but Masonry's politics aims not to preserve but to destroy. The most important foundation is the Religious Liberty clause. It has to go, declares The New Age, because it ensures equal rights to those "who owe supreme allegiance to a foreign Government." This is the favorite Masonic designation for the spiritual Government Christ established for all people. It certainly is foreign to Masonry. Not only must the First Amendment go, but also the Monroe Doctrine, and on like grounds. From the Monroe Doctrine sprang the Washington Bureau of South American Republics, and from this the Pan-American Mass, which the crafty Hierarchy and "the tricky Jesuits" concocted to impress Latin-America and "strengthen their already formidable grasp of the balance of political power in this country;" hence "let us destroy the Monroe Doctrine."

Universal Summons Against Romanism

This appeal to destroy every foundation of the Constitution in order to destroy Catholicity, followed immediately the promulgation in 1913 of a notable Allocution by Supreme Grand Commander Richardson, successor of Pike. This despot of the lodges congratulated his liegemen on their "absolutely harmonious relations" with the Grand Orient Supreme Council — this after their worst abominations in France and Portugal and Sovereign Grand Commander Nathan's in Rome. He endorsed Pike's calumnious reply to Leo XIII's Encyclical; and to thwart here all papal plans, thus proclaimed: "We have the right to summon not only every Scottish Rite Mason, but every Protestant in religion, every true patriot and lover of this country who places the Constitution and the laws of their country above and paramount to the dogmatic and sometimes cruel and bloody edicts and Bulls of the Papacy, to resist to the uttermost the aggressiveness of the Roman Catholic Church." He further issued command to his one and a half, now two million, Blue Lodge and Scottish Rite Masons, "this Grand Army of our Republic," to array themselves with the members of every Protestant church and with all patriotic Americans "as one band of brothers against the avowed purposes of the Hierarchy of Rome."

Preparatory Masonic Propaganda

Thus in 1913 Supreme Commander Richardson issued the call which Pike deemed impolitic in 1888. The spirit of the Lodge had changed, for Pike dead had, in his work and by his writings, especially Morals and Dogma of the Scottish Rite, become more potent than Pike living. The forty-two Masonic organs of all rites had been absorbing his poison and doling it out in homeopathic doses to their multiplying millions of readers. They were well served by such cheap and handy books as Buck's Genius of Freemasonry and Stewart's Symbolic Teachings. These boil down the more elaborate expositions of Pike, and give them up-to-date and easily intelligible application; and whoever reads them will realize that this presentation of Masonic purpose is milder than theirs. And they are the popular books advertised and eulogized in every Masonic organ, as also in the Menace and its kind. Buck's masterpiece, whose secondary title, "Twentieth Century Crusade," is significant, sets down "The Immaculate Conception and the Divinity of Jesus" as "the gigantic fraud of the Roman Hierarchy, a cloak for their diabolism," and a "relic of superstition."

Masonic Battle with the Roman "Moloch"

"This Moloch" — the Catholic Church — "preaches the religion of Jesus with all the images and mummeries of paganism. It practices every trickery and resorts to every crime to gain its diabolical ends. It is the gigantic, relentless, conscienceless Menace to civilization." It was in this phrase the Menace found its name. "We need to redeem the Redeemer from this most colossal outrage of all time." Common Catholic folk, even priests, know nothing of "the Double Doctrine of the Church of Rome," as which "no such foul and fostering blot can elsewhere be found on the face of humanity." "The Holy Father and his College of Cardinals are a corrupt gang of conscienceless politicians, and his order of Jesuits, plotters and spies, the secret service of the political ring, as immoral and dangerous to liberty as the Mafia." The Hierarchy is just as bad, "in politics despotic, in religion but modernized Egyptian paganism." Which is true, by the way, of high degree Masonry, as is also this: "If all the cunning and ingenuity of devils were boiled down and crystallized it could not exceed this Politico-religious Statecraft of Holy Church. Her religion is as immoral as her politics are irreligious and devilish. They both should be damned together and held up to the execration of mankind;" and so on indefinitely. "Clericalism is a nightmare of the Dark Ages, the galvanized corpse of the superstitions of all time."

Culminates in the Schools

But against this dark ogre stands Masonry arrayed, "the only World Power that is the eternal enemy of all this modernized paganism, the Genius of Man's higher evolution, the Light of the Twentieth Century!" By this Light must Masons save America from Roman darkness. Their "select men and true" must arouse the indifferent from their lethargy, "and while they cannot outvote the hordes of Roman Clericalism, they can by their intelligence, courage and perseverance, hold the balance of power here as Masons have long held it in France." Thus should Masons "enlist for the war, and never cease fighting till Rome shall let our politics, our Free Schools and all our Free Institutions severely alone." But Rome's main point of attack is "our Secular Free Public Schools." The Hierarchy, "under pretence of Religion, is running a political campaign." By its solid Catholic vote it creates Bossism, and thereby accumulates wealth, which it uses to build up Parochial Schools and superstition, and then clamors for further graft from the school fund, while it labors to demoralize the Public Schools "by the Jesuitical trick of getting Catholics appointed in the very schools they are seeking to discredit and destroy. This is the most vital part of the Roman Catholic Crusade in this country today." You will note first, that the culminating point of Masonic attack is Catholic Education vs. Godless Schools, and, second, that this book is advertised not only in the organs of Masonry and its openly allied societies, but in those of its most effective secret alliances, the Guardians of Liberty, the Menace and their off-shoots.

Masonry's Widespread Anti-Catholic Books

Prominent among many other Masonic publications of like import, but more widely diffused, stands Stewart's Symbolic Teachings, or Masonry and Its Message, which is rivaling Buck's Genius of Freemasonry as a Masonic best seller. In brief outline his message is, that Masonic Light was held by all pagan religions till Christianity extinguished it when St. Cyril killed Hypatia and Gnostic Neo-Platonism, but various heresies revived it while Rome was absorbing the most degrading forms of heathenism; and he offers parallel texts to show that every article of the Creed and every invocation of the Litany of the Blessed Virgin were adopted from such heathenism. Christ was born a mere man, evolved himself into God, and so may anybody, especially a Mason. "The name Jehovah means 'Male-Female'," the essence of Phallic worship, which is "the lost word" of inner Masonry, that is, the generative principle; and this was original Christianity. "The great world of preachers from Gautama to Seneca have served the world well, but Jesus is not among them." He next adopts "Haeckelism," and then, like Buck, turns his guns against the Catholic Church; its paganism, its despotism, its "using religion as a cloak" to carry on treasonable works against the fundamental principles of the United States Government, and above all, its "repeated attacks on our public schools, the principal bulwark of our hard battle for liberty." Our "politico-ecclesiastics" having charged them with being Godless, so as to get a share of the school tax, subtly urged the same for other denominations. "Once the wedge enters, then goodbye to our system of education, which is the corner-stone of our liberties. It is time we should institute a never-ending campaign against any and all such seditious efforts." He then proceeds to urge counter charges against our schools, that they are "the breeding ground of convicts and traitors, nurseries of treason under the cloak of religion;" that "the parochial schools teach Vaticanisms, and Vaticanisms are un-American because they are directed against our free institutions;" and so on.

Preachments of Masonic Magazines

Now, these ravings and hundreds in like vein have been delivered as lectures in the lodges, have been and are advertised in all of the Masonic organs, and distributed by the millions through The Menace and its kind, in order to stimulate Masonic study and remedy the evils which Stewart and the Masonic organs deplore: That the common herd pack the Lodges only for a supper, are interested only in stories "they cannot tell to any lady," and, "finally, these candidates join the lost interest regiment." Moreover, Stewart's teachings and program have been adopted by the authorized organs of every Rite. The articles in his book have been published in The New Age, The American Freemason, The Tyler Keystone, Life and Action, the leading Masonic organs of the Scottish Rite, and the Blue Lodge and York, and Templar systems. The Tyler Keystone has for a decade advocated union with the French Grand Orient, and applauded all its machinations against the Church. In March, 1918, the Editor insists that the Grand Orient program is truly philosophical, that its lodges are schools to mould the citizenship of the nation — (we know how they have done it); that recognizing no truths except those based on reason and conscience they specially combat the "Superstitious presumptions of French Clericalism, for the emancipation of the human spirit." It exhorts its readers to follow French example, and "separate morality from religious superstition and theory;" and it rejoices that already "the truth which the Masonic body has created percolates into profane society with manifest results."

Here is what it percolated September, 1917: "Nothing stands between American and French Masons but the little intolerable word Dogma. Masonry is more than a Church; it is not a religion, but it is Religion. It brings together to its Altars men of all Creeds in belief of those truths which are greater than all sects, deeper than all doctrines, the glory and hope of man." Quickly its approving readers followed its lead and entered into open alliance with the Grand Orient. Life and Action, edited by Buck and others of the Thirty-third Degree Supreme Council, is, if possible, more viciously anti-Catholic than The New Age. It attacks Popery as "a complete reinstitution of Egyptian paganism," controlled and operated in America by the Jesuits, to the end "that our common school system of education be entirely destroyed;" and, therefore, let our two million Masons do "what thirty thousand Masons have done in France . . . loosen the hold of this Italian Pope and his College of Cardinals, now slowly strangling the life of the Nation."

"The American Freemason"

But the most important of all their organs is The American Freemason, which reads the law as authoritatively to the one million seven hundred thousand Blue Lodge members, as does The New Age to the three hundred thousand of the Scottish Rite. Its Editor, Joseph E. Morcombe, an Englishman, is an able writer, and also candid and gentlemanly, contrasting favorably with most Masonic Editors, especially The New Age magnate, who lies and vilifies with fluent ease. For example, the June New Age attacked an article in "America" disproving the Masonic claims that Washington, an ardent Mason, had, in 1788, founded the Lodge in Alexandria, Va., where they are now projecting a Washington Memorial Temple to impress the Capital with Masonry's importance. The article cited Washington's written statement in 1798, that he had not been in a lodge more than once or twice in thirty years; that he abhorred the principles then being introduced in Masonry, and now obtaining, and showed that, in fact, there was but one entry of Washington's attendance at lodge in forty-five years. The New Age Editor dismissed these documented proofs with the statement that "Reverend Michael Kenny, S.J., is either ludicrously ignorant, or contemptibly dishonest." The character of readers whom this will satisfy is easily appraised.

The Editor of The American Freemason is of different caliber. Having read and verified the article, he advised Masons to give up the Washington project, as Masonry had done more for Washington than he had done for Masonry. In a dozen numbers he devoted some sixty pages of courteous criticism to other articles on Masonry in "America," paying tribute to the honor and honesty of writer and magazine; and several personal letters were in like spirit. He deprecates "eruptions of blackguardism," and deems such allies as the Menace unfortunate. He would have intelligent Craftsmen find keener and more effective weapons than abuse; for: "The historical facts both of Freemasonry and the Catholic Church, the official pronouncements of both institutions and the admitted purposes of the two opposing organizations give a sufficient arming for the controversialist." He objects that Catholicism "insists on being the only Simon-pure, blown-in-the-bottle kind;" but he makes the grounds of opposition clearer:

Antagonism to Catholicity Officially Declared

"This magazine has never swerved from the position that between the Masonic fraternity and the Catholic Church there is an antagonism inherent to the nature of the organizations: the one seeking broadest liberty of thought and the other striving to stifle all revolt against the self-constituted authority that would hold mind and soul in thraldom. We have declared that there can be no peace nor even truce between Freemasonry and the official Roman Church. They are opposing poles of thought; on the one side an authority that demands submission of will and conscience to a priestly caste, on the other an institution that insists upon individual freedom of thought with no intermediary between God and man."

Brother Morcombe explains this freedom of thought. Masonry is not a Christian organization, though "some of our more ignorant brothers have so claimed." (However, the New York Supreme Grand Lodge did so claim before the New York Supreme Court of Appeal, to safeguard itself from legal inquiry, and had its claim allowed. But Masonry will claim or disclaim anything according to its interests.) It is not even theistic. "In Freemasonry," he writes, June, 1914, "God is not a dogma but a symbol; for its spirit is expressed merely in the symbolism of signs, forms and words, which grant the most far-reaching mental liberty... The work of Masonry is concerned with the here, not the hereafter. I have never heard of anyone enjoying himself after he was dead." He dislikes the Scottish Rite and its dominance of the Lodges, holding that the real purpose of Masonry to mould the mind, character, morals and government of men, is contained in the first three or Blue degrees; that the multiplied secrets, fictions and solemnities of the Scottish Rite degrees are a waste of energy, distracting men from Masonry's true objective; and that the initial requirement "only to oblige them to that religion in which all men agree excludes all dogma and any power claiming the mantle of heaven." Since the exposition in "America" of Masonry's origin in 1717, the Editor of The American Freemason has advised to discard all the absurd legends of ancient origin, and The New Age follows his example. But he thoroughly approves the Scottish Rite's affiliation with the Continental atheistic bodies, and has long insisted that these alone constitute real Masonry, that in repudiating them the American and English Lodges merely made themselves ridiculous, and that all Masons of every Rite should affiliate with the Grand Orient and become openly as well as secretly associated with the persecuting activities of French, Italian and Portuguese Masonry. He anathematizes the one French Lodge that restored Christian symbols and belief in immortality, and therewith the English lodges that acknowledge it. Mr. Johnson, who recently exposed, in the New York Times, French Masonic machinations and the treason of Caillaux and others, innocently accepted the Grand Orient's implication that its rulers belonged to this lodge. Masonry lied, as is its wont, like Lucifer, its prototype and acknowledged spiritual chief.

Masonry's Mouthpiece Lauds the Grand Orient

Brother Morcombe is an exception, and when prevaricating is ill at ease. But he thoroughly approved the infamous Portuguese Republic, adopted all Sovereign Grand Commander Nathan's insults to Pius the Tenth, and summons all American Masons to support this typical Mason against "Roman arrogance." Protestantism he holds contemptible, but yet useful as "the opponent of a power claiming spiritual mandate." Wherever this mandate holds, that is, where the people are Catholic in spirit, he would ride over majorities and the national will. Hence, like all Masonic leaders, he champions "Protestant Ulster," and urges the Grand Lodge of Ireland to "follow the path taken of necessity by French Freemasonry." It matters not to him that this is an underground path by which a secret political cabal destroyed religious liberty and organized with the Minister of War a spy system to ferret out what officials and relatives of officials were Catholics. All is fair against "Roman duplicity and arrogance." This was four years ago. Today The New Age follows his lead, stating, June, 1918, in reply to Mr. Johnson's spy-system charge against French Masonry: "They certainly did that, and they made no secret of it (not true)... We have no apology to offer for the Grand Orient of France." On the contrary, it has a threat. The Jesuits are doing here what the clericals did in France; and "it should be definitely understood that there are two million Masons in these United States, and all of them are voters — no baptized infants among them; quite enough to make it extremely hot for public officials who are guilty of any such practices or who countenance them in others." Thus we are clearly put on notice that the Grand Orient system is ready for operation here. In fact, it is already operating.

The Editor of The American Freemason, fearlessly logical like Pike, has harvested earlier than he had hoped, and, unlike Pike, has witnessed the reaping. For a dozen years he has been glorifying the Grand Orient system as the only true Masonry, and urging his Blue Lodge brethren to affiliate in fact and in method, and become the real thing. Mild objections were made, but his expensive magazine prospered, and now his campaign has won all along the line.

American Masonry Joins the Grand Orient

In February, 1917, cold Canada thrilled him. The Grand Lodge of Manitoba, to strengthen its "force in moulding public opinion," decreed to unite with the Grand Orient; but the thrill was chilled by Manitoba's recognition also of the Christian Masonic group of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and one Belgian lodge. Why? "As distinctively Christian it is the very negation of Masonry, a limiting of fraternity to an extent that destroys its very plan and purpose... It has been the glory of French Masonry that it has identified itself with the advance thought of the nation, and brought back the institution to its original conception." But in April the Manitoba chill was thawed out by Louisiana's sun. Grand Master Thibaut, of Louisiana, had pleaded in 1911 for recognition of the Grand Orient of France, "whence liberty, equality and fraternity arose, and freedom from the spiritual oppression and interference of a foreign Hierarchy." The Louisiana Masons were of the Grand Orient brand, and proved it as early as 1763 by not only expelling the Jesuits ignominiously, but confiscating their altars, chalices, vestments and property throughout the whole Mississippi Valley. In April, 1917, Grand Master Thibaut's plea was approved. With Louisiana or any other American Lodge the Grand Orient disdained to compromise. It had to be recognized without Christ and God and Bible, or not at all. "We are in no haste," its Grand Secretary wrote, "to fraternize with children, and are willing to wait till such as they have gone to school." They have gone. Present Grand Master Purser said: "True, the great light in Masonry with us is not placed on their altars; but American Masons have widely divergent views about this book... I recommend recognition of the Grand Orient of France." It was so ordered by unanimous vote.

In commending Louisiana's action Mr. Morcombe insists that the Grand Orient is much more logical than the American lodges. They teach openly the true Masonic doctrine, "the essential Divinity of man," and are at one with Krishna and Buddhist and Vedist, who teach that "Divinity's holiest shrine is within the heart of man;" the doctrine that has made "Masonry a universal society above and beyond all religious confessions and having to serve as handmaid to no church or sect." The Federal Council of the French Lodges appointed Brother Morcombe their American representative and sent him a Grand Collar for his services. He deserved it, and it fits him.

All the Lodges Grand-Orientated Now

While he was thus acclaiming the Grand Orient's Luciferian doctrine of individual divinity as the heart of Masonry, other American jurisdictions were taking the Grand Orient to heart. The Grand Lodges of Kentucky, Texas, Georgia and other Southern States quickly followed Louisiana's lead, some lodges making the war a pretext for condoning principles they had formerly denounced. In fact, however, these principles had gradually become their own, and the chief movers made no secret of it. The Grand Lodge of Massachusetts anticipated Texas; and New York, with the richest and most numerous Masonic membership in the Union, also accorded full recognition. Still more important was the like action, without a dissenting vote, by the Grand Lodge of the District of Columbia, which, with its thirty suffragan lodges and ten thousand members representing every department of State and nation, is the concentrated essence of American Masonry.

The wave has passed west, meeting one from California which has sent forth a wave of its own, and probably every lodge in the United States is now formally affiliated with the French fraternity. A year ago the Grand Lodge of California resolved that "world affairs required the universalization of Masonry," and hence removed all inhibition to hold Masonic intercourse with Masons in France, Belgium and Italy. Full recognition was to follow "in ample form." So, for practical purposes, the Grand Orient, the relentless enemy of Catholic education, is here.

Grand Orient Educational System Adopted

And it is here as such. In France and Italy, etc., Le Temps, the Paris Times, described it in 1905 as a political association without declaring itself as such: "Knowing the dangers of publicity, the advantages of obscurity, it directs from its secret meetings the organizations and administration of government, especially regarding religious liberty and belief, and by the secret character of its rites evades the restraint of public control and legal restriction." Now, by fraternization with the Grand Orient, our American lodges have implicitly adopted the Grand Orient principles, which their leaders have professed explicitly: (1) That Masonry is all-sufficient and alone sufficient to direct man's mind and morals and human destiny; (2) That a man can be a good Mason without God or Christ or Bible. So far some eighty per cent of American Masons have been too much imbued with the spirit of civil and religious freedom to accept these doctrines; and this Brother Morcombe and the other Masters frequently deplore. But even these imbibe unconsciously the irreligious spirit and moral laxity of Masonry, and gradually become troweled into material suited for its purposes. Moreover, "The truth which the Masonic study has created percolates into profane society with manifest results." The Grand Orient's alliance will quicken the process in their acceptance not only of its doctrines but of its methods. This process is already far advanced. We have seen that the official organ of the Scottish Rite has heartily approved the Grand Orient's spy system and threatened to operate it here, and that the dominant organ of the Blue Lodges has blessed the Grand Orient with all its machinations and secured for it unreserved acceptance. Both organs have at the same time been urging the adoption in the United States of the Grand Orient's educational program; and they are urging it now.

Making the War a Masonic Asset

They have seized by the forelock the opportunity presented by the war at its opening; and they propose to exploit to the full all the opportunities it presents at its close: "From the synthesis of English, American, French, Italian and South American Masonry," says The American Freemason, February, 1918, "will result the world-wide brotherhood of man for which our craft has been no more than preparing and into which the final Freemasonry can merge as having reached the goal of its unremitting endeavor." The war has given Freemasonry "a wider outlook;" hence, "at this critical period the organization must be prepared as a universal institution to assume full share of the responsibility of real work for humanity. Theories and formulae, dogmatic affirmations, the utterance of creeds and conventionalities, all lies and hypocrisies, will be accounted at proper worth or worthlessness." And The New Age 33rd Degree Magnate seconds his Blue Lodge brother, October, 1917: Corner-stone laying and degree work are not Masonry. The war's message is, to cut out "rubbish of outgrown and obsolete, false and fictitious notions; drop almsgiving; make brotherhood include all peoples; consider ritualism as merely a means to the end, and teach the end forcibly; make the subject for study classes of the million and a half Masons Masonic Efficiency, and make our order a municipal asset, a State pride, a national necessity."

Primary Plank: Masonify the Schools

And its first national necessity is that recognized as such by French and Belgian Masonry and the other new fraternizations, the Masonification of the schools. In December, 1916, The New Age wrote: "The public school system is the backbone of the republic. To train children to become citizens, to take their places in the great social, political and industrial system of the country, is the grand object of the free schools. Instruction is necessarily non-sectarian because of the fact that liberty of conscience is the very bedrock of the republic. The public schools are the melting pot of these United States." Hence the primary duty of Masons to take interest in the educational cause, and this must be their objective: "We have said before, and we now repeat that if we can have our way, as we hope to have some day, no person in all the United States or its territories will be eligible for public office of any kind who is not a product of the public schools or of schools that are open at all times to the inspection of public officials."

Make All Schools Godless by National Law

In February, 1917, the Blue Lodge spokesman improved on the Scottish Rite program. Commenting on the 1916 Masonic Educational Congress at Paris, this "Ligue de l'Enseignement" which for forty years has inspired the Ministry of Public Instruction, he specially commended their plan of extending the State primary schools to a compulsory post-scholastic course in State institutions, embracing all pupils from twelve or thirteen to army age, and thus to force Catholic school pupils into the Godless school net. M. Painlevé, Minister of Education, accepted the plan, and addressed the Congress, glorifying the Godless schools as the source of French Heroism. The American Freemason lauded French Masonry for "bringing about the needed change from church controlled schools to a purely secular system... As for the moral teaching, the desired end is best accomplished by insistence upon the natural or experiential mandates. The State has a duty even superior to the rights of the family... What is needed in the United States now and for some generations to come is a national law insisting that no group or people of any nationality, nor class, nor church, shall maintain a primary or secondary school anywhere in the land." There is the Grand Orient edict issued by the most authoritative American spokesman of the one million seven hundred thousand of the lower Masonic Rites, whom his influence has consolidated with the Grand Orient; an edict already issued by the official organ of the higher Rites. And this is no solitary declaration; it is typical of their purposes repeatedly proclaimed. "French Masonry," continues The American Freemason, "is to be honored for considering during the stress of war the present and future educational needs of their country. It were well if in the years to come the American people and the American Masons were as clear-sighted and would work with like intelligence."

"Every Man His Own Priest"

In April, 1918, the same editor adopts heartily the French Masonic cry: "Clericalism, that is the enemy" and demands that American Masonry shall take it up and apply it here, especially its educational program and, therefore, remove God and all ecclesiastical appurtenances from education, and make it what it ought to be, "unreligious." In American recognition of French Masonry he sees the time approach when "every man shall be his own priest, his own soul the temple for true worship." The sectarian school is in the way: "So long as schools are maintained to produce Methodists or Catholics, or aught else but American citizens, the generations cannot labor together as they should for the perfection of the nationality which is the world-hope. Let us Masons, by unequivocal words and actions, insist on one system of education for all, uninfluenced by sectarianism;" or, as his New Age brother puts it: "A public school system absolutely unsectarian, serving all the people alike, Catholic, Jew, Protestant, agnostic, atheist." (December, 1917).

We have seen that that same Masonic power has divided our people into two opposing poles of thought, one of Masonic freedom brooking no intermediary between God and man, and the other of Catholic submission to priestly authority; and he has threatened that once this latter is proven inherently opposed to Americanism, Catholicism will have to go. To hasten the process our schools must be secularized universally; but meanwhile the existing public schools must be more thoroughly Masonified: "It is the constant assaults on our public school system that more than all things else has brought American Masons to avowing hostility to the Catholic political machine, masked as a religion."

Away with Catholic Teachers and Officials!

Masons also assail the public schools; but whereas Catholics find fault to make them better, Masons find fault to make them worse. They are not good enough for Catholics because God is not taught in them. They are not bad enough for Masons because Catholics teach in them. Brother Morcombe is reticent at this point; not so the official spokesman of the Scottish Rite and his cluster of journalistic satellites. The Tyler Keystone, the Square and Compass of Louisiana, organ of the Most Grand-Orientated Lodge in the country, and scores of kindred organs, have attacked as un-American the principle that Catholics should have the right or privilege to teach in the public schools, the Square and Compass putting it frankly on the ground that "This is not a Christian nation," despite a Supreme Court decision to the contrary. The New Age, the Scottish Rite luminary, whose light they borrow, has frequently so instructed them. It thus expressed itself March, 1917: "To condemn the schools and refuse to patronize them, and still to claim to have a voice in their direction, looks to us very like the height of impudence, or stronger words to that effect. Those who are not American citizens have no right in the case anyhow. If citizens of this country wish their fellow-citizens to have any confidence in them, they must cease being Roman citizens and be straight-out Americans; if they don't, let them go and live in Rome, where they belong... In the public schools of many of our cities these people have so managed by wire-pulling that more than half of the teachers are Roman Catholics. Why have they done so, if they have refused to allow Roman Catholic children to attend the schools?"

This was apropos of the candidacy of a Catholic for election on the Seattle school board. The New Age had nothing against him as a citizen; but as a Catholic, "away with him and put none but Americans on guard!" They did away with him, and they have succeeded very generally in putting Masons on guard as school directors and superintendents even in strongly Catholic centers, who will guard Masonic interests in text-books and teachers and teaching. The stock advertisement of their most widely propagated book, Buck's Twentieth Century Crusade, carries this: "A summons to Masons, a Timely Warning to American Citizens, showing how the Forces of Liberty and Darkness are Arrayed for Action in the Coming Crisis. Every Mason should inform himself, Concerning the Effort to Degrade our Free Public Schools, to Dominate the Education of American Youth and 'make America Catholic.'"

Masons "Invest in Brains and Souls"

The campaign of the forces of Darkness is also constructive. When The American Freemason, April, 1918, had laid it down that, educationally, nature and the human equation must alone be regarded, and Providence must be discarded, the editor proposed that the National Memorial of the Bicentenary of Masonry, 1717–1917, be an educational movement. The war necessitated postponement. This gives time to make the great Memorial a coming-together of all Masons "in defense of our school system no matter by whom assailed." After the war better education will be more imperative than ever. Therefore, "let Masons the whole country over celebrate this Bicentennial by establishing scholarships in the higher institutions of learning;" and he reminds them that "the Fraternity is rich." These scholarships shall be "known and designated as Masonic... The details of this plan are purposely kept back at the present time." Therefore, funds have been established in some of the present jurisdictions to provide scholarships. Think of the result in some ten or twenty or fifty years if a few scores or hundreds of the best and brainiest of the nation have been coming from college annually, equipped to lead the generation through the liberality and vision of the Masonic fraternity. What the reflex good to the institution!" And his last word to the numerous men of money in the fraternity is: "Invest in the brains and souls of our young men and women."

Masonic Influence in State and Nation

And this precisely they are doing, their investments inducing a mental and moral bondage, destructive beyond their knowing and far-reaching beyond their seeing. The bondage, in which by multiplied and terrifying oaths they bind their own members to chiefs and ends unknown, is the antithesis of liberty; yet of liberty they ever boast as brazenly as Lucifer, whom their official poet, Carducci, acclaims the "spiritual chief of the Masonic army." But as numerous as is organized Masonry, unofficial Masonry outnumbers it. It founds other societies of similar spirit and scope for various classes of society, and exercises, says Gould, its historian, remarkable influence over all oath-bound fraternities. The Cyclopaedia of Fraternities reckons over six hundred such societies in the United States patterned on Masonry and under its influence, so that one-third of the adult males in the land are oath-bound members of societies, formally or informally Masonic. Even further its influence extends. Authoritative Masonic spokesmen (Cath. Encyc. IX., 784) have compared Masonry to a deep river pushing silent to the sea. "It works quietly and secretly but penetrates through all the interstices of society in its many relations," and "unperceived sows the seed that brings forth fruit in laws and enactments;" and the fruit is as the seed, materialistic, rationalistic, corruptive of Christian morality and message. Often seed and fruit are seen together in the legislative and executive departments of State and nation, in most of which, if not in all, Masons predominate in numbers and in potency. Certainly more Catholics than Masons voted for the present ruling party at the last two elections. During these two terms how many Catholics have been appointed to the National Cabinet? And then, how many Masons? Consider how true now is the boast of American Masonry in 1825: "It comprises men of rank, wealth, office, and talent, in power and out of power, and that in almost every place where power is of importance. And it comprises among other classes of the community, to the lowest, in large numbers, active men united together, and capable of being directed by the efforts of others so as to have the force of concert throughout the civilized world. They are distributed, too, within the means of knowing one another, and the means of co-operating, in the desk, the legislative halls, on the bench, in every gathering of business, in every party of pleasure, in every domestic circle, in peace and in war, among enemies and friends, in one place as well as in another."

It is something to think over; and while thinking, look down the line and compare the relative numbers of Catholic and Masonic officials of importance before the stress of war forced efficient men to the front. But behind the front the "Masonic power and pull" have been notoriously and fruitfully active.

Masonic Thought in the Universities

More important than present officialdom are the builders of the future, the moulders of the nation's thought. How many of our State and quasi-State Universities are not largely manned by Masons, from the president down? Read the books, especially the pedagogic books, they publish or use or advertise or cite or refer to, and you will find the dominant Masonic ideas pulsing through every chapter, very often unconsciously but none the less effectively. "What is Education?" by Moore of Harvard, adopts Herbart inasfar as he dethroned "the faculties of the mind which scholastic ignorance had erected to explain mental life" and "tore away the scholastic rubbish" from psychology. But Herbart was too conservative. He retained such terms as will, intellect, reason, etc. Such mental organs do not exist. The acts of willing, thinking, etc., our actual experience, is all we know. And we must "cease to becloud ourselves by using the word discipline." There you have theoretically and practically the experiential naturalism inculcated by Masonry. Like theories run through The Meaning of Education by Butler of Columbia, and through the general output of such institutions which not only undermines the basis of true education but belies the historic story of its builders, and through multiple channels, poisons the minds of our youth against its true principles and exponents, and trains their receptivity for further Masonic poison. Such Universities are now active in bringing the primary and secondary schools under their pedagogic control. They are becoming the dictators of all public school courses and methods, and the Masonic powers facilitate the process by controlling the State and City Boards of Education, and thereby the teachings and texts, and where possible the teachers. As the seed the fruit: mental and moral naturalism and religious negation.

A Masonic University to Mould Education

But with all this direct and indirect Masonic education moulding the masses, Masonry is not satisfied. Nor will its Bicentennial Memorial Scholarships, "to be designated as Masonic," in such universities, cover its aims. The unconstitutional character of the proposed National University in Washington has killed that project for the time, and central national control of all education remains in embryo. (July 24, 1918). It would be interesting to trace the connection of the propagators of both designs with the Grand Lodge of the District of Columbia. But that lodge and its associate are taking no chances. The New Age of October, 1917, contained the report of "Brother Hugh T. Stevenson, Chairman of the special committee appointed to consider the advisability of establishing a non-sectarian university under Masonic auspices." The committee were unanimous that the hour had arrived for establishing such a University; that they must create therefor a Charitable and Educational Association, to be manned exclusively by Masons or members of dependent Orders, and maintained through the Sovereign Grand Commanders, and the Grand Masters, and the Grand High Priests, and the General Grand Matron of the Eastern Star, and the Imperial Potentates, and the Grand Monarchs of all American Masonic Rites. It will be a Grand Imperial University; but it will be easier to deal with than a Masonic University disguised under a National designation.

Our Duty as Catholics and Citizens

Masonry teaches that its secret purposes, principles and ends must be discovered by the Initiate himself; and, if he fails to discover them as the various degree and ritual ceremonials are unfolded, he is not a truly "Bright Mason." The unfolding of American Masonry's works and wiles, especially in matters educational, should discover to the truly Catholic educator the methods of counteracting them. Our authorized leaders have more reason than the Masonic chiefs to complain of lethargy in the ranks. We are too prone to flatter ourselves that Providence and American fairness will pull us through without special effort of our own, whether we be of those who refuse to see Masonic machinations in anything, or of those who see them in everything, or of those who justly appraise them. But America and the Lord God expect us to attend to our own business and to use the powers we have from God and the Constitution to defend our civil and religious rights like men, and do it in the open.

A false prudence, which is cowardice, has too often kept our hands tied and our eyes and mouths shut till the enemy is ready for the big drive. And Masonry is now mustering for that drive. It is true the working understanding between the forces of evil is often unconscious, but Masonry is best organized, most cognizant of the material available and most efficient also in this that it is the most specious and deceptive. In the aftermath of the war there will doubtless be social conflicts between the "Haves" and the "Have-nots," but though Masonry belongs to the "Haves" it has known in France and elsewhere how to manipulate the "Have-nots" and by multiple devious devices utilize them deftly for its anti-Christian purposes. Fortified now by its continental alliances it will initiate Grand-Orient tactics here modified to meet less favorable conditions. The modifications will depend mainly on our capacity and courage, and these on our intelligent and comprehensive preparation; that is, on our educational equipment.

Catholics Must Also Organize Educationally

Masonry has shown foresight in safeguarding its future schemes. There is, or was, a bill before Congress, piloted by Congressman Huddleston, making it a felony to publish or to advertise or to send through the mails any disclosure or promise of disclosures of the secret work or procedure of "a fraternal order, such as Masons, Odd Fellows and Knights of Pythias," under penalty of $1,000 fine or six months imprisonment or both; and with the proviso that, on trial, witnesses shall be exempted from testifying as to the truth or falsehood of the accusations. Will it pass? Not yet. But such a bill has become law in Oregon and Tennessee, and was passed by the California Legislature. Governor Johnson's veto alone prevented it from becoming law, and, therefore, saved this paper from being an illegal document.

We have to recognize that the adept Mason is already active and is harnessing Protestantism to his engines. He is in university, legislature, magazine and newspaper office, and, without open ultimatum against God, he is stealthily sapping God's fortresses. Hence all secular education when not anti-supernatural is non-supernatural, and the public school is a religious sterilizer. Masonry is organizing further sterilization, and we have to organize against it and on educational lines.

1. Teach Religion Thoroughly and Throughout

In the first place, we should teach Religion and its history solidly in a well-graded comprehensive course and let its light illumine our every department of literature and science. Let our teachers derive inspiration from Catholic principles and traditions, not from the systems of religious sterilizers, and train their pupils for higher Catholic institutions, not for the great sterilizing universities. Let our Catholic schools be Catholic. Give our youths from their earliest years a reason for the truth that is in them or is put into them. Teach them the philosophy of things, according to their age and capacity. What is the Catechism but a compendium of all philosophy and theology? The modes of reasoning and the reason why were never so imperative as now when even the youngest are deluged with false principles through stories, papers, magazines and movies; and if they get no philosophy in the lower grades most of them will never get any. Against the Masonic "despotism of mind and conscience" every Catholic student should be sufficiently imbued with philosophy to realize that the Catholic Church is the empire of reason enlightened and vivified by the Author of reason. Every Catholic teacher should be grounded at least in elementary philosophy; should know the history of the Church, its achievements in art and architecture and philosophy and literature and civilization and culture. Such teachers arouse an enthusiasm that works into all secular branches, and their pupils go forth confident in the truths they have acquired, both profane and sacred, proud of their Church and able and eager to defend the light of Faith and reason against the charges of Masonic darkness. Not all go forth. Many so inspired will stay to fill up the ranks of our teaching Sisterhoods and Brotherhoods. Experienced teachers know the value of enthusiasm as a stimulus to study; and the strongest of all enthusiasms is reasoned religious enthusiasm. The Scottish Rite mouthpiece is ordered "to breathe the spirit of Masonry" upon all national affairs. Catholic teaching should breathe into the pupil the spirit of the Holy Ghost relative to all other teachings and to all the problems of life.

2. Infuse the Principles of the Constitution

Patriotism comes next, and the textbook of patriotism is the United States Constitution. For practical purposes the Constitution is our country, and loyalty to it is patriotism. Ours is the wisest and most Christian instrument of government that obtains among great nations. It has given and preserved our liberties, and will preserve them as long as we shall maintain it. But to maintain it, we must know it; and very few know it, even among lawyers. It should be taught early and continued in graduated courses, so that our youth realize their civic duties and rights and be able to discharge and defend them. They will discover that at the very doorsteps of our schools they are defrauded of constitutional rights; that they have to bear double the educational burden of other citizens because they follow their religious convictions as the Constitution authorizes. The unsectarian or religionless public school has no warrant in the Constitution. It did not exist when the Constitution was drawn nor for half a century later. Moreover, the Constitution's builders did provide for schools, but these were to be religious, not religionless. The first Constitutional Congress unanimously adopted the 1787 Ordinance drawn by Jefferson for the government of western territory. This Ordinance declares its purpose "to fix and establish the fundamental principles of religious liberty as the basis of all laws, Constitutions and Governments which forever after shall be formed"; and therefore ordained six Articles of Compact between each future State and the National Government. The First Article provides that no peaceable person "shall ever be molested on account of his mode of worship or religious sentiments"; and the Third Article reads thus: "Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good Government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be encouraged."

Religion in Schools Prescribed by the Founders

It is plain, therefore, that the fathers of the Republic considered that religion, morality and knowledge should be imparted together in schools, and that schools which impart religion and morality as well as other knowledge are "necessary to good government."

Such were the schools they knew; for the so-called non-sectarian school did not then exist, is, in fact, a modern importation of French Masonic invention; and the United States Supreme Court has declared that the intent of the religious liberty clause in the Constitution must be interpreted in the light of the acts of the men who put it there. Now, these two Articles providing that religious liberty shall be inviolable, and religious education shall be encouraged, have never been repealed. Therefore the schools which teach religion and morality are truly American and those which discard them are not; and the schools which the Masonic powers are scheming to impose upon us all are un-American, contrary to the intent and the spirit of the founders of the nation and the architects of the Constitution.

Hence, it is our civic duty not only to defend our religious schools, but to extend them, and, when and where we can, to bring back the laws and practices of our States to the fundamental organic basis from which they have been wrenched. That should be our answer to the Masonic attack; and in doing so we shall be standing on the Constitution, they will be outside of it. Let us tell them that in our educational system, we, not they, are the Americans. We are not the opponents, we are the original inventors of public schools. The Catholic Church had created them and fostered them a thousand years before America was discovered or Masonry imagined, and fostered them in the spirit of the builders of our Constitution, binding religion, morality and other knowledge together, universalizing education, and therefore beginning rationally with the First Cause of mind and the First Principle of Knowledge.

Defence of Religious Schools a Civic Duty

It is our duty to uphold the State in seeing that its citizens are equipped for their necessary civic duties; but it is also our duty, constitutionally as well as religiously, to see that the State does not prevent, but rather that it supports their equipment in the most necessary educational requirements of civic duty, religion and morality. We have a civic right and duty to protest against being compelled to bear an unequal educational burden, contrary to the spirit of the Constitution and the principle of equal right before the law. Once our schools provide the instruction the State requires we have a constitutional as well as moral right to receive therefor the school taxes which we pay to the State. We are the State as much as anybody else; and since by our higher birth-rate in peace and our higher percentage of volunteers in war we have contributed the largest proportion of citizens to the service of the nation, we have first title to its recognition of our just demands.

The people are sovereign; and wheresoever by our suasion and our votes we can prevail on the people of the State to return to the spirit of the founders and give us back our school monies to support the schools of our conscience, it is our civic as well as our moral duty so to do. It is also our best policy, for it is the boldest, the most open, the most American, and it puts the enemy on the defensive. In the meantime as a test of our schools' efficiency, as well as for the general good, let us urge the extension of civil service to every public department, State, national and municipal. This fair and open test will strengthen our schools and greatly weaken the Masonic "pull."

Equality Before the Law

It is becoming a necessary policy. Not much more than half of our children are provided with Catholic schools, or can, or do attend them. We know what usually becomes of the rest in the first or second generation. Besides, we, as Christians and citizens, have to think of our fellow-citizens, some sixty or seventy millions of whom are going forth godless from godless schools. They are the material for Masonic schemes; and if we do not modify the material the Masonic chiefs will soon have an unquestioned majority that will ruthlessly set their materialistic feet upon our necks; and the Constitution be — doomed. It is our religious duty to exert our civic powers, not for the destruction of the public school, but for its betterment. The injustice we suffer, that over one-sixth of our citizenship should have to safeguard its conscience by paying a school tax double that of the remainder, is injurious to all. When equality before the law is broken in one direction it is easily broken in any. "This Republic," said Lincoln, "cannot continue to exist half-slave and half-free"; and neither can it continue healthily to exist so long as one large and growing section of its citizens is, for conscience sake, compelled to bear double the burden of other citizens.

Equal Monies for Equal Work

The Masonic organs and their satellites make us bear the onus of wanting our prorata of the school funds. And so we do. We want it, for we have a right to it; but we have not had always the wisdom and the courage to voice our rights. Let us boldly demand them in the voice of the Constitution, and that voice will ultimately prevail. Meanwhile we shall have put our Masonic friends on a weak and retreating defensive. If they urge the State to pry offensively into our schools and institutions, we can demand that the State examine their oaths and constitutions which, by terrible penalties, make Masonic obedience paramount to the laws of the land. This, several States have done already in our history, and as a consequence have prohibited such oaths and made Masonic societies illegal. We may have to ask them to do so again; and as constitutional citizens we should be prompt to demand it should occasion require. Such should be the effect of the thorough teaching of the Constitution in our schools. Turn out Catholics; not Latin nor Greek, nor French, nor Irish, nor German Catholics, but Catholic Americans knowing their rights and able and courageous to defend them. Once our Schools are in open competition with all others our fellow-citizens of other creeds will recognize their material as well as moral efficiency, will patronize them more largely, and more quickly appreciate and accord the justice of our claims to an equal share in educational monies for equal educational value.

3. Cultivate and Extend the Catholic Press

The third and last suggestion is to teach contemporary history from Catholic papers and magazines and cultivate a taste therefor, and thus create readers and writers of Catholic Journals and a clientage for the Catholic or at least the honest daily or dailies that must come if we mean to continue standing on our feet. Among several adaptable to this purpose, "America" presents, especially to the higher grades, more matter of varied educational value than any secular weekly in the land; and for every grade "Truth," and "Our Sunday Visitor," that marvel of cheapness of price and richness of worth, are always inspiring and seasonable supplementary instructors.

But the weekly press will no longer suffice. It is notorious that certain forces have recently captured the secular press for their purposes; so that, as Mr. Chesterton puts it, "The ordinary purchaser receives all his political information and all his political marching orders from what is a sort of half conscious secret society, with very few members but with a great deal of money." Masonic folk will have taken note. Let them once get a man into the White House who will apply that experience to us, and Catholic education could soon be put out of business, unless we have strong and honest American dailies with strong Catholic support.

Organized Demand for All Constitutional Rights

Audacity is the Masonic watchword. We should adopt at least the courage of its content. We must insist on equal rights under the Constitution in educational finance, and claim all our rights. It is only by insistence we will ever actualize the spirit of the Constitution; but our urgings will be useless unless we have our Catholic people behind us, and this we cannot have unless we educate them up to it. But bold co-ordinated insistence on our solid constitutional rights will stimulate support and quicken education. Whispering humbleness inspires nobody. Let us put the enemy on the defensive, and insist that no extra-legal oath-bound associations shall control legislation and Government. Have an educational committee in every Diocese to watch over State legislation, preventive and remedial of wrong and promotive of right; and have a committee representative of all these on duty at Washington. And let everything be done in the open: "I spoke openly to the world, and in secret have I spoken nothing." (St. John, 18:20).

Put True Americans on Guard

Committees on all matters of Catholic interest, divorce and social legislation, for instance, should be similarly appointed, but the educational committee should be supreme. This is a big program, but it is necessary. Its realization may take time, but unless we start in earnest it will take eternity. An authoritative Catholic committee on watch in every Legislature and in Congress is a crying need, but particularly on matters touching education. Had we had such committees at work and had we rolled out our rightful claims in thunderous expression, we should not now be in danger of having the Mass, the heart of our religion, eliminated from many of our States; nor would a number of iniquitous social laws have been written into our statutes; nor should we be doubly burdened for maintaining the educational principles of the framers of the Constitution.

Battle Bravely for God and Country

The editor of The American Freemason has, in his apparent triumph, uttered a word which should be made true by every truly Catholic American: "A few men, if brave enough to stand consistently for the right as against the active opposition of some or the indifference of the many, will sooner or later find support and strength, and in the end will achieve victory for their cause. The fair-minded are always in the majority; it is only that so many are timid and that so many more are apathetic." The course of action sketched requires sacrifice to be effective. It requires much of the prudence of the Christian martyrs; not the prudence of pusillanimity, not the prudence of "safety first." We are the heirs of a long line that threw human prudence to the winds for right and truth; and if we are true to that heritage we shall infuse their spirit, their courage, their ideals, into the Catholic body, and through them into the body of the nation. Then will be realized the logical consequence of Catholic education; the full actualization of our grand Constitution in a citizenship throbbing with the power that is of God.

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Postscript

December, 1919.

Catholics who judge Masonic purpose by the large but decreasing number of Masons unacquainted therewith, should note that authoritative organs are boldly and continuously propagating that purpose up to the present hour. During 1919, The New Age, the official organ of the Supreme Council 33rd Deg., has been virulently calumniating the Church from every angle, frequently by forged documents. In October it arrays Masonry with "all Protestantism and all intelligent American citizenship" in fighting Catholicism, which it denounces as "A bigotry that has been, and is, endeavoring to return us all to spiritual and political slavery."

While the foregoing pamphlet was being issued, the July "New Age" was reiterating the Masonic school program as cited therein. On page 308 it accounts for the admitted deficiencies of the public schools and their teachers by the fact that, "you put Roman Catholics on the school board and send them as your representatives to the State Legislatures." The remedy is:

"Put none but Americans on guard, and also see to it that no man or woman shall be eligible to any office of trust or profit under the United States, or under any State, who is not a product of the Public Schools."

It is instructive that "The New Age" sees provision for this remedy (Sept. p. 404) in the bills pending in Congress "for the establishment of a National University and the creation of a Department of Education." The educational bills of Smith, Towner & Co. are stamped with the full Masonic Seal in "The New Age" of November, which records the following among the resolutions of the Supreme Council of the Thirty-third Degree in their biennial session, October 20, 1919:

"Whereas, There is now pending in the Congress of the United States an Act commonly known as the Smith-Towner Bill for the purpose of fostering education by the nation and the states... be it

RESOLVED, That the Supreme Council of the A∴ A∴ S∴ R∴... hereby unanimously places itself on record as favoring such an educational project and promises to use its best efforts to aid in the beneficent operation of such a wise and far-seeing measure."

They further promise to enlist the entire Masonic membership in support of those bills. It is the solicitude of parents for their offspring.

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