American masonry and Catholic education Kmniy 1 M ! tXcxeJ American Masonry AND Catholic Education Enlarged Edition, with Foreword by His Grace The Archbishop of Baltimore BY REV. MICHAEL KENNY, S.J. International Catholic Truth Society 407 Bergen Street Brooklyn, N. Y. Congratulations and Blessings Received on the Silver Jubilee of the International Catholic Truth Society Rome , Italy , November 4, 1924. Patrick Cardinal Hayes , Archbishop of New York . Your Eminence: On the occasion of the Silver Jubilee of the International Catholic Truth Society the Holy Father congratulates its officers and members for the splendid work in favor of truth. Wishing the Society still greater success His Holiness imparts to them all his Apostolic Benediction . ( Signed ) Peter Cardinal Gasparri. AMERICAN MASONRY AND CATHOLIC EDUCATION BY REV. MICHAEL KENNY, S.J. (Paper read at Catholic Education Convention, 1918, with Supplement covering Masonic Activities to date. ) FOREWORD When Father Kenny read his paper on “American Masonry and Catholic Education” at the Catholic Educa- tional Convention in San Francisco in 1918, he knew exactly what he was talking about. He was informed. The edu- cators who had charge of the publication of the papers and excluded his paper from the Convention volume, were not. They were afraid it might give offence. With them it was the old story: “Oh say nothing about it: do not stir up strife : it will be all right.” That policy of pussyfooting, of quasi-apology for our existence, of deep gratitude to every- one for being permitted to live, is worthless. It is an in- dication of cowardice to say the least. It is to the credit of the officers of the International Catholic Truth Society that they at once recognized the necessity of acquainting the Catholic public with the sinister schemes and unjust plans of Masonry, particularly of the Scottish Rite brand and that they discerned in Fr. Kenny's paper a fair, scholarly and adequate exposition of the subject. They published it five years ago and in this second edition is to be found much additional, valuable, and recent material. The good men who all but refused the paper a hearing in 1918 are now wiser and perhaps sadder. Their informa- tion has come to them from the published plans of official Masonry for the destruction of our schools. The Masonic brethren were not afraid to let the world know where they stood in this all important matter of our schools : “Delenda est schola Catholica—the Catholic school must go.” Their policy, open, frank, and fearlessly given to the world once more only a month ago, means that and nothing else. The Constitution, Supreme Court decisions, inalienable rights of parents, all such considerations mean nothing. Official 4 American Masonry and Catholic Education Masonry has passed the word on to its millions of ad- herents and that word is one of enmity to our schools-, the Republic’s finest support. Our Catholic leaders as well as our Catholic people need to wake up. They have kept their heads in the sand long enough. The cause of Jesus Christ is for us identical with the cause of Christian education. Christian education is Catholic education. In this pamphlet the author has rendered a splendid serv- ice to Catholic education. Many fair-minded Masons will be benefitted by the perusal of it. For them it will be an “eye opener.” Congratulations to Father Kenny. All prophets do not succumb to stoning. * MICHAEL J. CURLEY Archbishop of BaltimoreJanuary 12, 1926 AMERICAN MASONRY AND CATHOLIC EDUCATION {Paper read at Catholic Education Convention , 1918, with Supplements covering Masonic Activities to date .) MASONRY, THE CENTRAL ANTAGONIZING FORCE EOR the purpose of this paper Catholic education is re-garded 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 con- verged 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 sys- tematically, 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 foun- dations 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 im- plied, that not a cent be diverted to any educational plan or purpose of a religious character, and that from the institu- tions 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 6 American Masonry and Catholic Education 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 cun- ning 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 American Masonry and Catholic Education 7 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 universal- izing 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 de- nominator. Jew, pagan and Christian were equally eligible, but in England, the Bible and the Grand Architect were re- tained as Landmarks. Not so in France, where in 1721 Masonry attracted the Voltarian elements, who soon made 8 American Masonry and Catholic Education it what it is today, here as well as elsewhere, a rationalistic society designed to organize humanity on a purely material- istic 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 con- sequent 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 be- fore 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 so- ciety and governments, the grand Masonic design of estab- lishing 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 American Masonry and Catholic Education 9 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, Com- munions, Funerals, Blessings, Dedications, Maundy Thurs- day 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 “En- lightenment, 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 mur- dered 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 10 American Masonry and Catholic Education 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 teach- ings 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, attain- ing perfection in man, every man being a Divine Incarna- tion ; 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 sum- marizes 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 American Masonry and Catholic Education 11 the rest. Hence the Masonic organs are continually rebuk- ing such brethren, who enter for business, social or political advantage, as “sheep-walking, knife-and-fork Masons,” urg- ing them to study its peculiar enlightenment and thus be- come, 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 or- dinary rites. This new Rite will be the unique universal center of action, the most powerful for direction just be- cause most unknown.” This mysterious all-controlling coun- cil 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 rea- sons, “neither of our political factions, the Democratic or the Republican, dares to resist the Roman Church’s en- croachments or warn the people of its insidious influences, which are incessantly making rotten the foundations of our 12 American Masonry and Catholic Education 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” was a 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 enlighten- ment. 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 1887 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 for- midable 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 atmos- phere has been intensified, the general Masonic tempera- ment 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 ab- solute liberty of conscience, expunged from its Ritual the American Masonry and Catholic Education 13 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 per- sistently 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 all fundamental rights, their expulsion of Christian teachers from the schools, and their expunging of God's name from the textbooks, as they had already ex- punged Him from their Rituals. Now, during all this time, all the American Masonic organs and leaders gave them un- qualified 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 Catholic- ism 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 depart- ment 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 14 American Masonry and Catholic Education 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 artistocratic 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 Protes- tants,” 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 educa- tion so that the people may know nothing but what the American Masonry and Catholic Education 15 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 33 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, polit- ical, 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 so- ciety; 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, be- cause 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 Mon- roe Doctrine, and on like grounds. From the Monroe Doc- trine sprang the Washington Bureau of South American Republics, and from this the Pan-American Mass, which 16 American Masonry and Catholic Education the crafty Hierarchy and “the tricky Jesuits” concocted to impress Latin-America and “strengthen their already for- midable 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 Con- stitution in order to destroy Catholicity, followed imme- diately 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 abomina- tions in France and Portugal and Soverign Grand Com- mander 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 utter- most 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 mem- bers of every Protestant church and with all patriotic Ameri- cans “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 American Masonry and Catholic Education 17 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 Free- masonry 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 re- ligion 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, relent- less, 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 festering 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 18 American Masonry and Catholic Education despotic, in religion but modernized Egyptian paganism.” Which is true, by the way, of high degree Masonry, as is 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 im- moral as her politics are irreligious and devilish. They both should be damned together and held up to the execra- tion 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 JMan’s higher evolu- tion, 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 canont 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 zvar , 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 pre- tence of Religion, is running a political campaign.” By its solid Catholic vote it creates Bossism, and thereby accumu- lates 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 ap- pointed in the very schools they are seeking to discredit and destroy. This is the most vital part of the Roman American Masonry and Catholic Education 19 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 effec- tive 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, es- pecially 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 prin- ciple; 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 Govern- ment, and above all, its “repeated attacks on our public schools, the principal bulwark of our hard battle for liberty.” 20 American Masonry and Catholic Education 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 goodby 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 re- ligion;” 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 ad- vertised 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 Free- mason, The Tyler Keystone, Life and Action, the leading Masonic organs of the Scottish Rite, and the Blue Lodge and the 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 pro- gram is truly philosophical, that its lodges are schools to mould the citizenship of the nation—(we know how they American Masonry and Catholic Education 21 have done it) ; that recognizing no truths except those based on reason and conscience they specially combat the “Super- stitious presumptions of French Clericalism, for the eman- cipation of the human spirit.” It exhorts its readers to follow French example, and “separate morality from re- ligious superstitions and theory;’" and it rejoices that al- ready “the truth which the Masonic body has created per- colates 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 , hut 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 en- tirely 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 Ameri- can Freemason, which reads the law as authoritatively to the one million seven hundred thousand Blue Lodge mem- bers, 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 gentle- 22 American Masonry and Catholic Education manly, 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 Washing- ton’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 dis- honest.” 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 courte- ous criticism to other articles on Masonry in “America,” pay- ing tribute to the honor and honesty of writer and magazine ; and several personal letters were in like spirit. He depre- cates “eruptions of blaguardism,” and deems such allies as the Menace unfortunate. He would have intelligent. Crafts- men find keener and more effective weapons than abuse; for: “The historical facts both of Freemasonry and the Catholic Church, the official pronouncements of both insti- tutions and the admitted purpose of the two opposing or- ganizations give a sufficient arming for the controversialist.” He objects that Catholicism “insists on being the only American Masonry and Catholic Education 23 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 or- ganizations: 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 con- science to a priestly caste, on the other an institution that insists upon individual freedom of thought with no inter- mediary 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 govern- ment of men, is contained in the first three or Blue degrees ; 24 American Masonry and Catholic Education 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 require- ment “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 con- stitute 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 re- stored 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 implica- tion 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 prevaricat- ing is ill at ease. But he thoroughly approved the infamous Portuguese Republic, adopted all Sovereign Grand Com- mander 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 American Masonry and Catholic Education 25 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 under- ground 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 du- plicity 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. 26 American Masonry and Catholic Education 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 Thibault 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 Hier- archy." 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," it had written in 1911, “to fraternize with children, and are willing to wait till such as they have gone to school." They have gone. In 1917 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. American Masonry and Catholic Education 27 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 doc- trine, “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 repre- sentative 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 Luci- ferian 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 prin- ciples 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 28 American Masonry and Catholic Education the French fraternity. A year ago the Grand Lodge of California resolved that “'world affairs required the univer- salization 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 o,f 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 organization 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 fre- quently deplore. But even these imbibe unconsciously the irreligious spirit and moral laxity of Masonry, and grad- ually 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 American Masonry and Catholic Education 29 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 is close: “From the synthesis of English, American, French, Italian and South American Masonry," says the The American Freemason, February, 1918, “will result the world-wide brotherhood of man for which our craft has been no more than prepar- ing 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 respons- ibility of real work for humanity. Theories and formulae, dogmatic affirmations, the utterance of creeds and conven- tionalities, all lies and hypocrisies, will be accounted at proper worth or worthlessness." And the New Age 33d 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." 30 American Masonry and Catholic Education PRIMARY PLANK: MASONIFY THE SCHOOLS And its first national necessity is that recognized as such by French and Belgian Masonry and the other new fraterni- zations, 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 cit- izens, to take their places in the great social, political and industrial systems 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 TEnseignment” 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, em- bracing all pupils from twelve or thirteen to army age, and thus to force Catholic school pupils into the Godless school net. M. Painleve, Minister of Education, accepted the plan, and addressed the Congress, glorifying the Godless schools as a source of French heroism. The American Freemason American Masonry and Catholic Education 31 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 exper- iential candidates . 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 Metho- 32 American Masonry and Catholic Education dists 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 Ma- sonic freedom brooking no intermediary between God and man, and the other of Catholic submission to priestly auth- ority : 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 ass- aults 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 Cath- olics 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 journa- listic satellites. The Tyler Keystone, The Square and Com- pass of Louisiana, organ of the most Grand-Oriented 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 American Masonry and Catholic Education 33 and Compass putting it frankly on the ground that “This is not a Christian nation/' despite a Supreme Court opinion 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 like the very height of impudence, or stronger words to that effect. Those who are not American citizens have no right in the case any- how. If citizens of this country wish their fellow-citizens to have any confidence in them, they must cease being Roman citizens and must 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 condidacy of a Catholic for elec- tion 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 superin- tendents 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 Citi- zens, showing how the Force 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' " 34 American Masonry and Catholic Education MASONS “INVEST IN BRAINS AND SOULS” The campaign of the forces of Darkness is also construc- tive. When The American Freemason, April, 1918, had laid it down that, educationally, nature and the human equa- tion must alone be regarded, and Providence must be dis- carded, 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 establish- ing 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 in- ducing 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 American Masonry and Catholic Education 35 antithesis of liberty ; yet of liberty they ever boast as bra- zenly as Lucifer, whom their official poet, Carducci, ac- claims 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 excercises, says Gould, its historian, remarkable influence over all oath- bound fraternities. The Encyclopedia 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 Ma- sonic 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 depart- ments 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 num- bers, actve men united together, and capable of being directed by the efforts of others so as to have the force of concert 36 American Masonry and Catholic Education 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 piece 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 members 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 fruit- fully 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, in- tellect, 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 Ma- sonry. Like theories run through The Meaning of Educa- tion by Butler of Columbia and through the general output of American Masonry and Catholic Education 37 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 teach- ings 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 uncon- stitutional character of the proposed National Uuiversity 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 con- nection of the propagators of both designs with the Grand Lodge of the District of Columbia. But that lodge and its associates 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 38 American Masonry and Catholic Education 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 b£ 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 cer- emonials 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 be- tween the forces of evil is often unconscious, but Masonry is best organized, most cognizant of the material available American Masonry and Catholic Education 39 and most efficient also in this that it is the most specious and deceptive. In the aftermath of the war there will doubt- less 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 modifica- tions 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 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, witnessses 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 Ten- nessee, and was passed by the California Legislature. Gov- ernor 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 40 American Masonry and Catholic Education public school is a religious sterilizer. Masonry is organizing further sterilization, and we have to organize against it 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 com- pendium 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 princi- ples 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 suffici- ently 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 arch- itecture 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 American Masonry and Catholic Education 41 darkness. Not all go forth. Many so inspired will stay to fill up the ranks of our teaching Sisterhoods and Brother- hoods. 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 mouth- piece 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 govern- ment 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 edu- cational burden of other citizens because they follow their religious convictions as the Constitution authorizes. The unsectarian 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 Constitu- tional 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 42 American Masonry and Catholic Education 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 Gov- ernment. 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 neces- sary to good Government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged ” RELIGION IN SCHOOLS PRESCRIBED BY THE FOUNDERS It is plain, therefore that the fathers of the Republic con- sidered that religion, morality and knowledge should be im- parted together in schools, and that schools which impart religion and morality as well as other knowledge are “neces- sary 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 im- portation 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 interpret- ed 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 be forever 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 religi- ous schools, but to extend them, and, when and where we American Masonry and Catholic Education 43 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 at- tack ; and in doing so we shall be standing on the Constitu- tion, they will be outside of it. Let us tell them in our educational system, we, not they , are the Americans. We are not the opponents, we are the original inventors of pub- lic schools. The Catholic Church had created them and fostered them a thousand years before America was dis- covered or Masonry imagined, and fostered them in the spirit of the builders of our Constitution, binding religion, morality and other knowledge together, universalizing edu- cation, and therefore beginning rationally with the First Cause of mind and the First Principiant of Knowledge. DEFENSE OF RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS A CIVIC DUTY It is our duty to uphold the State in seeing that its citi- zens 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 require- ments 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 propor- tion of citizens to the service of the nation, we have first title to its recognition of our just demands. 44 American Masonry and Catholic Education 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 god- less from godless schools. They are the material for Ma- sonic 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 relig- ious duty to exert our civic powers, not for the destruction of the public school, but for its betterment. The injustice we sufifer, 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 American Masonry and Catholic Education 45 if 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. Mean- while we shall have put our Masonic friends on a weak and retreating defensive. If they urge the State to pry offens- ively 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 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 effici- ency, 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 46 American Masonry and Catholic Education taste therefor, and thus create readers and writers of Cath- olic Journals and a clientage for the Catholic or at least the honest daily or dailies that must come if we mean to con- tinue 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 sup- plementary instructors. But the weekly press will no longer suffice. It is notori- ous 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 informa- tion 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 coordinated insistence on our solid constitutional rights will stimulate support and quicken education. Whispering humbleness inspires nobody. Let us put the enemy on the American Masonry and Catholic Education 47 defensive, and insist that no extra-legal oath-bound associa- tions 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, 18:30). PUT TRUE AMERICANS ON GUARD Committees on all matters of Catholic interest, divorce and social legislation, for instance, should be similarly ap- pointed, 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 par- ticularly 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, elim- inated 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 edu- cational principles of the framers of the Constitution. BATTLE BRAVELY FOR GOD AND COUNTRY The editor of The American Freemason has, in his ap- parent 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 48 American Masonry and Catholic Education are always in the majority; it is only that so many are timid and that so many 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 con- sequence of Catholic education ; the full actualization of our grand Constitution in a citizenship throbbing with the power that is of God. NOTE—In the eight years that have elapsed since this paper was written American Masonry has gone forward on the lines revealed therein with a rapidity and publicity never hitherto recorded. These activities, of the utmost practical interest to all who have American liberties at heart, are outlined in the following pages. January 6, 1926. American Masonry and Catholic Education 49 MASONIC SCHOOL ACTIVITIES TO DATE The set purpose of official Masonry, to make religionless schools universally compulsory by State and Federal action, as expounded in this pamphlet, was put before the National Convention of the American Catholic Educational Associa- tion in San Francisco, July 1918. The ruling committee of the Association deemed it prudent to exclude it from their published Bulletin of the papers presented; and, accord- ingly, no action was then taken to inform and warn our people of the disastrous consequences so plainly forecast. OREGON SCHOOL LAW HATCHED IN THE LODGES Meanwhile the Masonic organs were vigorously urging their school program in the open, while John H. Cowles, Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council 33rd Degree Scottish Rite and editor of its organ, “The New Age,” was touring the Grand Lodges of his jurisdiction in the Southern and Western States from Washington, D. C., to Oregon, inciting the membership in secret session to secure the enactment of the Order’s school program in the law of the land. Pledged their unanimous support, he was further encouraged by the promising progress of the Smith-Towner Bill, the first and forward step towards complete Federal control of education. With the then sparse Catholic opposi- tion and the support of not a few Catholics of prominence, this centralizing measure seemed floating into harbor on a sea of petitions organized by the Scottish Rite in pursuance of the resolution of their Supreme Council, November 1919. The flowing tide in their favor heartened them to hasten the realization of their purposes, and in May 1920, the 50 American Masonry and Catholic Education Supreme Council, at a hurriedly called meeting in Wash- ington, D. C., thus resolved:' “That we recognize and proclaim our belief in the free and compulsory education of the children of our nation in public primary schools supported by public taxation, upon which all shall attend and be instructed in the English language only.” Declaring this public school compulsion “the only sure means of perpetuating our free institutions,” the resolution further pledged the support of the Order to secure its attain- ment. In June 1920 the same resolution was adopted by the Grand Lodge and Imperial Council of Oregon; and immediately thereafter the Scottish Rite officials and organs openly led the agitation for the Oregon School Law com- pelling the attendance of all children between 8 and 16 in the public schools. The Masonic heads prepared and promoted the Initiative petition, and both they and the Masonic press claimed jubilantly the credit of its adoption at the Oregon Election, November 7, 1922. SUPREME COURT NULLIFIES MASONIC LAW Similar bills were ready for introduction in many of the States canvassed by Sovereign Commander Cowles, but their projection was halted by the petition for Injunction against enforcement of the Oregon School Law. At the hearing before the U. S. District Court of Oregon, Jan. 15, 1924, the Scottish Rite sought and was granted legal repre- sentation on its own account. The federal judges unanim- ously granted the injunction, affirming the inherent right of parents and teachers, and denominating the law, “An Act to prevent parochial and private schools from teaching the grammar grades and in Oregon's appeal therefrom to the U. S. Supreme Court, the Scottish Rite's counsel again collaborated. American Masonry and Catholic Education 51 The Supreme Court’s opinion, June 1, 1925, rested mainly, as had the appellees’ pleadings and the District Court’s decision, on the Fourteenth Amendment to the Con- stitution, inhibiting State abridgement or denial of the privi- leges and immunities and equality under the law of citizens of the United States, in direct contradiction of Masonic contentions. Justice McReynolds, voicing the unanimous opinion of the Court, said: “Under the doctrine of Meyer vs. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390, we think it entirely plain that the Act of 1922 unreas- onably interferes with the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control. As often heretofore pointed out, rights guar- anteed by the Constitution may not be abridged by legislation which has no reasonable relation to some purpose within the competency of the State. The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this union repose ex- cludes any general pozver of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only . The child is not the mere creature of the State ; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and pre- pare him for additional obligations ” Matiy at once concluded that this unmistakable affirma- tion of parental and individual rights by the Court of last appeal had settled the school question forever, and we could now get along with our private schools in peace, especially as the opinion of the Court was generously acclaimed by the public opinion of the nation. They assumed that in a con- stitutional state of law respecting citizens such opinion would be final. 52 American Masonry and Catholic Education S. R. SUPREME COUNCIL DEFIES SUPREME COURT Such reasoners know not Masonry. The religionless virus in our public school system was, as shown p. 28, of French Masonic origin; and the Grand Orient’s complete program of universalizing compulsory education on the basis of the State’s predominance over family rights, has long been advocated by the official Masonic mouthpieces as the culminating achievement of Masonic ends. (pp. 19, 20 sq). For this they labored strenuously though well aware of its double discordance with the personal and re- ligious liberty clauses of the Constitution (p. 15), an impass- able barrier which they had long resented and determined to remove. Educationally the American rites were Masonic and not American.. When, therefore, the United States Supreme Court had declared categorically their educational ends and principles unconstitutional and destructive of natural rights, this writer had no expectation that the Supreme Council would become suddenly American and accept that finding as final. Yet even he was surprised by the audacity of their immedi- ate defiance of the Supreme Court in the public announce- ment of their fixed determination to continue their com- pulsory propaganda. We have italicized the phrases wherein the Court esta- blishes the rights and duties of parents to direct their children’s up-bringing and the State’s incapacity to standard- ize education or in any way trespass on these rights. Com- pletely ignoring this, the root principle of the decision, and impertinently noting that the Court did not state what opinion it would hold had the schools failed in their duties — a supposititious case purely within State and outside Federal jurisdiction—the Supreme Council of Masonry thus defies the Supreme Court of the United States : American Masonry and Catholic Education 53 “We are therefore, justified in continuing to assert and maintain our belief in the value of the compulsory require- ment of attendance of all children upon the public schools. We cannot at this time but insist upon the existence of the principle that the right of the child to avail himself of the educational opportunities of the public school is superior to the right of the parent or of any corporation, secular or religious, to shape in advance his intellectual allegiance, and we should be alert to unite with every move- ment which tends to the maintenance of this right.” MASONIC WAR ON PARENTAL RIGHTS When the newspapers published the Masonic Ultimatum with such headings as, “Masonic Council Makes War on Parochial Schools,” “Masons War on Private Schools,” the Supreme Council issued further pronouncement that whereas they had not referred to such schools, yet “not- withstanding the Oregon School Law decision, the belief of the Supreme Council in the value of compulsory educa- tion in elementary public schools remains unshaken.” The astounding statement that “the right of the child is superior to the right of the parent” is the Grand Orient phrasing of its Statocratic doctrine that the Masonic State is the repository of the child's rights and of all rights, and not only is “the child the mere creature of the State,” but so are the parents also. Hence our fond “inalienable rights” must go by the board and every movement must be seized to make this State absolutism supreme. This is Masonic principle and purpose, cold, bold and un- changeable, contrary to Natural Law and Divine Law, and contrary to the constitution and law of the United States even as declared afresh by its Supreme Judiciary. It is not only un-American but deliberately anti-American, and is entirely foreign in form, origin and content. This precise 54 American Masonry and Catholic Education procedure, wresting the children from the parents and de- livering them to the State for compulsory irreligious educa- tion, has recently been peremptorily reiterated by the Su- preme Masonic Masters as Masonry’s immediate objective. GRAND ORIENTATION OF AMERICAN MASONRY Finding that the voluntary Catholic lay schools, which had been established in France on the suppression and ex- pulsion, at Masonic instigation, of the religious teaching orders, were flourishing widely in the post-war period, the Grand Orient of France issued the following order, 1923,: “That one sole primary school be created and made obliga- tory for all children without distinction of sex ; that the passage of pupils from the primary to the secondary schools be made by selection, all the expense of this free education to be borne by the State.” The Grand Orient saw to it that Parliament would ex- ecute its mandate. Over the heads of the Masonic Deputies, ten of them Ministers, it thus snapped the whip : “The Parliamentary F. . * . M. are under obligation, in every circumstance of their political lives, to bend them- selves (se plier) to the principles that rule us. Theirs is the obligation to render account to their Lodges for their mandate ; ours is the duty to crush out every backsliding of the Parliamentary F. . • . M.” And in October 1924, M. Aulard, one of their chief spokesmen, again read out the Masonic order to the depu- ties of the nation: “The laws permitting liberty of teaching must be abrog- ated, and one free national school must be created, and must be made obligatory for the children of all classes in the primary and secondary schools.” That this Grand Orient program had, years ago, been accepted and proclaimed by the heads of all rites as Ameri- American Masonry and Catholic Education 55 can Masonry’s objective for all classes of schools within our territory has been previously explained (pp. 30 and 31) ; but their immediate concern is now limited to the primary grades. Official Masonry here has clearly the French Masonic will ; has it also or can it acquire their power ? SCOPE AND POWER OF SOUTHERN JURISDICTION The Southern Jurisdiction’s activities are taken ligthly by many as implying only the political power of the South. This may prove by no means light in certain contingencies, but the implication is a grave mistake. The Southern Jur- isdiction of the Scottish Rite is much more than Southern. It embraces thirty-three Southern and North-Western States, in fact all except the fifteen States east of the Mis- sissippi and north of the Ohio. It has further exclusive jurisdiction in Alaska, the Canal Zone, Porto Rico and the Philippines, and everywhere concurrent jurisdiction in the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. Its headquarters in Wash- ington not only facilitates its close relations with the Su- preme Lodges of France and Italy and the world at large, but puts it in immediate touch with every American Grand Lodge and Rite, which are all represented in the Capital. Moreover, “The New Age” has recently boasted of five Masons in the Cabinet and of a Representation in Congress more numerous than in the Parliament of France. The organization of Masonic Clubs in each of the many gov- ernment departments, under the eye and hand of the Sov- ereign Grand Commander, may procure him a wider and more facile influence. Besides, even the Blue Lodge author- ities, who admit while resenting the Scottish Rite predom- inance, are absolutely at one with it in its school program and accept the Southern Jurisdiction as the Scottish Rite. The occasional protest here and there of Northern Masons in influential Catholic surroundings does not affect in the y 56 American Masonry and Catholic Education slightest official Masonic solidarity. The bond that unites all sections remains unbroken, however expediency or cir- cumstance may halt its execution. WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH OF MASONRY The halt is in the ranks. The rank and file of American Masons are not yet indoctrinated in the official designs, nor would they stomach these if made clear to them on initia- tion. Not all even Scottish Rite Masons voted for the Oregon School Law, nor for the similar project in Michi- gan. The weakness as well as the strength of American Masonry lies in its numbers. For designs not manifestly un-American they are strong; but three million men—such is now their claim—cannot be de-Americanized in a genera- tion nor be infused with abstruse infidel philosophy. This partly explains why forty thousand indoctrinated French Masons have proved more effective instruments. Were the anti-Americanism of official Masonry’s position clearly brought home to the American rank and file there would be a slump in its roll and in its influence. But the many social and business advantages of the Lodges attract, and their religious camouflage deludes, the half-educated masses, who have been starved of religion in the schools and fed with scepticism elsewhere ; while their oath-bound obliga- tion precludes them from discussing lodge communications with the alien “profane” and thus getting light from without. OUR COMPELLING CIVIC DUTY We should bring them this light. Through every avenue of publicity we should expound to the American people the anti-American inwardness of Masonry, and particularly the anti-Americanism of its compulsory school program as both alien and antagonistic to our liberties. This they will American Masonry and Catholic Education 57 understand. Otherwise, it may be or become our civic duty to denounce all oath-bound extra-legal associations as — what John Quincey Adams once proved in our history and France has experienced and Italy has legislated—subver- sive of constitutional government and a menace to democ- racy. But our compelling duty now is to disrupt the insidious schemes through which Masonry plans to secure in time compulsory education by indirection. In 1919 the Scottish Rite Supreme Council promised the entire Masonic mem- bership’s support to the Smith-Towner Bill. Now, in its “Bulletin” of December, 1925, it guarantees the same sup- port for the Curtis-Reed Federal Education Bill, confident that the well set sheep’s clothing of this measure will look convincing to many Masons, who in an Oregon School Bill would detect the wolf. That the Curtis-Reed Bill would, as effectively as its predecessors, centralize education in Washington and grad- ually wrest its control from the parents and the States, to whom it constitutionally belongs, has been demonstrated in “America” and elsewhere. That this centralization of education at the Capitol would vastly enlarge Masonry’s capacity to utilize the present concentration of its forces in Congress and Senate and Government departments should supply further material for consideration and for action, as outlined in this pamphlet. SUPPLEMENT U. S. SENATE MENACED BY MASONRY have cited the recent imperative orders of the Grand Orient, weighted with threats, that the French Masonic Senators and Deputies shall vote and act, not by their own or their constituents’ judgment, but solely as directed by their lodges; and the danger was implied of like Masonic influence in the United States. To Americans who may deem such conclusions far-fetched and unrealizable here, we pre- sent the menacing command just issued by The Fellowship Forum to sixty-seven United States Senators, that they determine their votes on an American question, not by party or principle or public policy, but primarily by their Masonic affiliation and direction. The Fellowship Forum, though not formally an official Masonic organ, is edited by the former editor of “The New Age” and a past Sovereign Grand Master of the Scottish Rite. Its violent and slanderous anti-Catholic spirit is pre- cisely that of the official organ of the Supreme Council, and its nominally unofficial character is merely a convenience that enables it to bridge the ostensible separation between the Klu Klux Empire and Masonic Sovereignty, and thus without restraint to broadcast the views of Council and Kloncilium. It has done so on the American-Italian Debt Settlement with gratifying frankness. The settlement of Italy’s war debt to the United States was graduated in interest and time payments on the same principles that governed the settlements with England and other countries; but Masonry injected a new principle. The present Prime Minister of Italy is a persona non grata to Masonry. The head of the Italian government had realized, as had John Quincy Adams in 1832, that oath-bound secret societies, especially Masonry as being recruited mainly from professional men seeking material advantage, were paraliz- American Masonry and Catholic Education 59 ing law and executive action in every department, to such an extent that they had become themselves a government practically superior to Parliament and executive. He, there- fore, appealed to Parliament to assert its sovereignty and prohibit by law all persons in the employ of the government, of the provinces, and of the municipalities, from holding membership in any oath-bound society; on the ground that oath and loyalty to such societies and oath and loyalty to the nation and its heads, were incompatible. He offered numerous instances in war and peace of subversion of law- ful authority by Masonic orders and influence; and these were supplemented by Marshal Diaz and General Zupelli, who disclosed among other details of Masonry's hampering interference in the Tripoli and World wars, that even the commander-in-chief had been obliged to remit punishments by order of an inferior officer who was his Masonic superior. Chamber and Senate passed the law with practical unani- mity ; and it became at once effective. The people were be- hind it. Now this action of Italian domestic concern, which de- prived a group, not of fundamental rights, but of a privilege abused, is deemed sufficient ground by this dominant Ma- sonic organ for commanding American Senators to vote as Masons rather than Americans, and set their Masonic oath above their Senatorial oath, even in the interest of foreign Masonry. Thus The Fellowship Forum : SAME OATH BINDS AMERICAN AND ITALIAN MASONS “Casting aside every phase of economic injustice of the Italian Debt Settlement, whereby the administration seeks to force the Senate to vote away two billion dollars of American credit ; overlooking the dangers of further strengthening the cut-threat Mussolini's hands in his war on Democracy, and representative government; from a purely fraternal standpoint, the millions of Free-Masons of America have united in a protest that must be given heed by at least the Masonic members of the Upper House. 60 American Masonry and Catholic Education “ Sixty-seven of the ninety-six Senators have assumed the solemn obligations of Freemasonry. They have taken the identical obligation; sworn to the same oath of mutual pro- tection and defense as have their persecuted brethren in Italy. They have taken this obligation on the same Holy Bible, in view of the identical Great Lights, and called upon the same Supreme Architect to witness their vows. They have likewise pledged their sacred honor to abide by these vows, and have again called on the Supreme Architect to ‘keep them steadfast/ “Ninety-six Senators means that Forty-nine of the sixty- seven Freemasons in that body, without any other help, can block the outrageous proposal. Every man and woman in America knows, or will be enabled to find out, how each Senator votes, and which ones of those voting for the arch- enemy of Freemasonry were themselves members of the fraternity. NO EXCUSE TO ESCAPE MASONIC BOND “No Masonic Senator will be able to excuse his actions on the pretext that Italian Masonry is not regular, or not recognized by the Craft in America. Both branches of the order in Italy have official recognition by American Grand Lodges. That can be no excuse. “Masonry stands for representative government, religious freedom, equality of men. Mussolini not only has declared a war of extermination against these fundamental principles of the Order, but has pledged himself to eradicate the ‘pestilence of Freemasonry’ itself. Lie has sworn to ‘make the last Mason curse the day he first entered a lodge/ and he ‘longs to hear them plead in vain for mercy/ “From every State floods of protests have poured into The Fellowship Forum office, denouncing the proposed favoring of Masonry’s persecutor by extending him two billion dollars of American credit. The rank and file of the membership are bewildered, incensed, to think such a thing possible. American Masonry and Catholic Education 61 “They honor you as Senators, and love you as brothers in the Craft. They know the obligation you have assumed 'of your own free will and accord/ and knowing this, they have passed their trust in you, and their interests in your hands. You have an opportunity to justify that trust, and at the same time vote the best interests of your nation. You now have the chance to prove yourself a man and a Mason, and in so doing also defend the fundamentals of your gov- ernment, world peace and good will, while living up to the oath of office you took when you became a Senator, to up- hold this country's interests. "On the other hand, perhaps, there lies your supposed duty to your political party—which in this case does not lie along the path of duty to country, God or fellow man and brother Mason "You may choose between justice and right on one hand and party allegiance on the other. You may betray your Masonic brothers, both here and in Italy—or you may re- fuse to follow the administration into paths where it has no right to lead you, and where you are not bound, even by party loyalty, to follow. But this one thing is certain. NO MIDDLE GROUND FOR MASONIC SENATORS "You cannot be true to your vows as a Mason and to your oath of office as a Senator and at the same time cringe beneath the administration whip that would force you to betray every instinct of fair play, Democracy and civilized government. * "Do you wish to continue to be known as a Mason— a real, practical Mason? Do you want to retain the esteem and respect of your brethren? Do you want to retain even your own self-respect? Or are you satisfied to be branded like an animal with the monogram of a political master? No excuses, no explanations, no subterfuges, will avail! There is no middle ground. As a United States Senator are you for Italy or for America? As a Mason, will you be true to your oath and vote to protect the fraternity from 62 American Masonry and Catholic Education annihilation and your brothers from persecution? Are you for Mussolini or for Freemasonry ?” IMPORT OF THIS MASONIC THREAT The threat is not merely to the Senators. Rather does it menace the American Constitution and people, and especially Catholic liberties. If the Masonic Forum dares to threaten U. S. Senators openly, we could gather, were we not amply informed otherwise, what secret influences are employed to Masonify laws, legislatures and constitutions and public action and policy, be it in educational measures at home or in our relations with such Masonic governments as Mexico. LEO XIII PICTURES THE MASONIC MENACE On this date forty-two years ago Leo XIII pointed out both the menace and the methods of combating it. Opening his Encyclical on Freemasonry with St. Augustine’s twofold division of mankind, “Two loves formed two cities : the love of self, reaching to contempt of God, an earthly city; and love of God, reaching to contempt of self, a heavenly one,” the far-seeing Pontiff recognized Masonry and its subject societies as the organized army of the earthly city in our day. In its Naturalistic doctrines; in its loose and vague morality; in undermining the marriage bond and family life by its promotion of divorce and birth restriction and other unnatural practices; in its relentless- opposition to God’s Church and her head and its exclusion of God Himself from the education of youth; in its persistent endeavor to sever utterly Religion and its principles from law and govern- ment and all the avenues of civil life, and thus drive back society to even worse than pagan degradation; and in the expert duplicity with which it has learned to present the most insidious schemes and destructive principles in specious and plausible deceptiveness, the great Leonine Encyclical pictured Freemasonry as the central enemy of revealed re- ligion and the force best calculated, by its nature, purposes and plans, to undermine and disintegrate organized society. American Masonry and Catholic Education 63 POPE LEO^S METHODS OF COMBATING MASONRY The development of Masonry has but emphasized the truth of this picture. Pope Leo was speaking of Free- masonry “taken generically," and not “of its individual members"; and in the United States, as we have seen, the larger number are not yet inoculated with the full Masonic virus. But the virus is spreading fast; even now Masonic solidarity enables the Supreme Council to manipulate the ranks and allied societies for many of its purposes. It can keep the menace of compulsory religionless education im- minent, and secure our continuance in giving international countenance to our Southern neighbor while her truly Masonic Government is Bolshevistically alienating all the things declared by us inalienable, and drastically outraging the very “Nature and Nature's God" we insist has made them so. The time is ripe for vigorous application of the remedies prescribed by Leo XIII. Briefly they are these: 1. “Tear away the mask from Freemasonry and let it be seen as it really is," by informing the people of its arti- fices and the depravity of its principles. 2. While instructing the people in religious truths, imbue them with the Christian philosophy contained in them ; strengthen their love of the Church by knowledge of its achievements ; and, through such societies as the Third Order of St. Francis, “draw their minds to Liberty, Fra- ternity and Equality of right," as born of God in charity and justice and won for the human race by Jesus Christ, “but not such as Freemasons absurdly imagine." 3. Establish social, religious and cooperative societies, especially for the working classes, which, after the manner of the great Middle Age Gilds, wisely fostered by the Church, will promote and protect the temporal and eternal interests of all. 4. Devote your best energies, first and foremost, to the Christian education of the young in Christian schools. Let parents, priests and teachers “warn the pupils of the in- famous nature of these societies and the various and fraudu- 64 American Masonry and Catholic Education lent artifices of their promoters” ; and fortify them against all such snares by thoroughness of religious knowledge. 5. By united prayer implore God’s aid and blessing for your united labors. Against the union of the Masonic sects pursuing common ends by wicked compact and secret counsels with pertinacious audacity, let all good men unite in the widest association of prayer and common and stead- fast action that Christ’s Kingdom may flourish in freedom, and vice and error give place to virtue and truth. The Encyclical closes with this exhortation : “Let us fake as our helper and intercessor the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, so that she, who from the moment of her conception overcame Satan, may show her power over those evil sects, in which is revived the contumacious spirit of the demon with his unsubdued perfidy and deceit. Let us beseech Michael, the prince of the heavenly angels, who drove out the infernal foe; and Joseph, spouse of the most Holy Virgin and patron of the Catholic Church; and the great apostles, Peter and Paul, fathers and victorious cham- pions of the Christian Faith. We hope by their patronage and your united and prayerful perseverance that God in His Mercy will succor opportunely the human race encom- passed by such dangers.” BALTIMORE KEYNOTE FOR CATHOLIC ACTION That the wise Pontiff’s warnings are already inspiring resolute action in this crisis, is evidenced in the prompt reply by the Archbishop of Baltimore to the Masonic Su- preme Council’s defiance of the Supreme Court’s annul- ment of their Oregon School Law. Addressing the Holy Name Societies, in Washington, D. C. Archbishop Curley stressed the need of true Religion and more Religion to cure the cancerous, ills and Isms of the day and preserve the concerous ills and Isms of the day and preserve the threatened fabric of constitution and nation; and also the power of the Catholic Church alone to supply it. Her main instrument therefor is Christian education. It is her American Masonry and Catholic Education 65 duty, as it is her guaranteed Constitutional right, “to set the feet of the little ones early on the path of religious and civic duty. Of this right the bigots would deprive us. They care nothing for the Constitution. If it stands in the way of their hate—motived plans they would twist it into an instrument of moral torture for twenty million Catholics in America. Constitution, Supreme Court, parental rights, and rights inalienably rooted in human nature itself, must go if they prove an obstacle to the organized hate of Scottish Rite Masons.” His Grace’s closing statement follows : “The answer of twenty million Catholics in America to them and their friends is a defiant assertion of our rights as American citizens. We have no apology to make for our existence in America. We were here before the forces of un-Christian and un-American bigotry were unleashed to destroy truly American principles. We shall be here, ever loyal to God and America, when the fomenters of strife and propagators of the gospel of hate shall have been relegated to well-desqrved oblivion. Fear of opponents never enters the mind of the Catholic Church in America. It has never deterred the Church in any age from doing her work for Christ. She asks no favors from any government or body of men. She de- mands as she has a right to demand, freedom. Ameri- ca gives her that, and I may add that America has no moral right to withold it. “Our answer to the enemies of Christian education shall be in the useful and concrete form of more and more Catholic schools , wherein our children shall be trained to serve God and America. There they shall learn the lesson of love for all men in Christ, Jew and Gentile alike. Their secular training shall be second to none. Christ and His teachings shall be made their great exemplar and guide. When America needs their services even unto death, America shall have them, as America had the loyal service in her hour of need of the tens of thousands of the products of Catholic train- ing now sleeping their last sleep in far foreign fields. 66 American Masonry and Catholic Education “Men of the Holy Name Society, you are heirs to all the treasures of the long ages of Faith. Yours it is to give effective answer to the blind and unreasoning bigots by your noble living, by your love of Christ and His Church, by your deep interest in Catholic education. You have duties to God and America. Do them. You have rights as American citizens. Know and assert them. Eternal vigilance over such rights is the price you must pay even in this Republic if you wish to retain them.” ; April 20, 1926 THE GREAT NEED OF OUR DAY: A Well-Instructed Catholic Laity. The pamphlets listed below are clear, sound, instructive, and you can find in them a clear exposition of doctrine and an answer for the honest non-Catholic inquirer or a reply to the caluminating bigot. “Freemasonry,” by Rev. Lucian Johnston. “After All, What is the State?” by Rev. Lucian Johnston. “After All, What Is Law?” by Rev. Lucian Johnston. “Doctrine of the Secret Societies,” by Rev. John J. Graham, I.P.P. and “Secret Societies,” by Rev. William B. Hannon. “The Theory of Evolution,” by Rev. Albert L. Fletcher, Ph.D. ^Catholics and Freemasonry. Divorce and Remarriage, by Rev. William P. Sullivan. What Men of Science Say About God and Religion, by A. Edward Proctor. Christian Science, by John E. Graham. Price of the above pamphlets—Five cents a copy. Special reduction when ordered by the hundred. International Catholic Truth Society 407 Bergen Street Brooklyn, N. Y.