Committees are important, but a committee can be a hindrance as well as a help. If you really want a job done, don't bury it in a committee. Find the right man to do the job and put him to work.

7 - Our One And Only Function

Dear Tom:

O YOU also have encountered him; the Brother who has only scorn for Lodges of Master Masons. "They do nothing but confer degrees," he says.

As I read your letter this morning I could almost see the fire in your eyes, especially when you came to that final question:

"What would he have us do, I'd like to know; isn't that our one and only function?"

To which my reply would have to be, yes and no.

If our Lodges do nothing but repeat the words and phrases of our ritual, then the critic has a point.

But if in the process of conferring degrees our Lodges are making Freemasons, then his criticism is entirely unfounded.

It all depends on what precedes and what accompanies and what follows the ritualistic ceremonies of our degrees, Tom.

Personally, I doubt whether the Brother who irritated you so much was making the mental distinction between members and Freemasons. I've met his kind before; the dues-paying Master Mason whose loyalty and interest is in something else. Had you continued listening to him a few minutes longer I daresay he would have been denouncing our Lodges because they are not conferring enough degrees to keep the conveyor belt well filled with candidates for his favorite organization!

But just for the sake of argument, let's assume that his intentions were pure; that he was giving voice to a sincere concern that our Lodges are not doing their job. In that sense, when he complains that Lodges are "just conferring degrees," he is 100 per cent right, in my book.

It was sometime last spring, I believe, that you wrote to tell me of your bitter disappointment in a certain newly-raised Brother named Fred. As I recall the story, Fred was impatient to get his petition into Acacia Lodge, then impatient to get the degrees over. You were unhappy that the examining committee permitted him to get by on an extremely poor performance between degrees. The result was that he came to Lodge exactly three times, and you haven't seen him since. He rushed on to whatever it was he wanted in the first place.

"He'd be just as well off, and Masonry would be a lot better off, if he had joined the Playboy Club," you said.

Very well, Tom, my lad, let's argue that point just to have a bit of variety.

In the first place, Acacia Lodge didn't have to elect Fred to membership if that appeared to be his motive.

And in the second place, Acacia Lodge didn't have to rush him through the degrees. In doing so, our Lodge acted as an accessory, didn't it?

The Lodge could have insisted that Fred slow down and try to become a real-for-sure Master Mason while he was at it.

If Acacia Lodge had required that Fred take the time to start learning what Freemasonry is all about before the degrees, during the degrees, and after the degrees, he might have become a real-for-sure Master Mason.

After all, Acacia Lodge has every right to make a Mason on its own terms. To become a Freemason was not Fred's inherent right--it was a privilege. While he was a petitioner, and later a candidate, Acacia Lodge could have "written its own ticket," so to speak, and perhaps have made a true Freemason out of him if he had the inner qualifications to make a true Freemason.

So let's not be too hard on your critic whose thoughts probably were on something else. Instead of wasting our time trying to reform a man that probably can't be reformed, suppose we turn our attention to Acacia Lodge and to the Brother who expects to be Worshipful Master next year.

The Work Itself

At the outset, let's consider what we are doing and what we are failing to do when we confer the degrees. It may have been this that prompted your critic to unburden himself.

Here I am prompted to turn to the letter of a dear friend who wrote to discuss with me some of the things we need to be doing in American Freemasonry. At the top of his list is this challenging goal: "Seeing to it that the members leave every meeting of every Lodge in a spirit of animation and inspiration. This, to my mind, requires . . . absolutely perfect ritualistic work."

And he's right, isn't he? Why should we settle for anything less than "absolutely perfect ritualistic work?"

It should begin with the Entered Apprentice degree. Fortunately, the first degree lends itself to dignity and decorum. There's the place to create a favorable first impression. And it can be'done if you don't permit the third degree to tear down everything you have built up in the first.

Degree work nothing short of perfection should continue in the Fellow Craft degree with its unforgettable lesson of the mature man and his work.

But the "absolutely perfect work" of which we are capable, and which every candidate deserves, will rule out the self-appointed comedian and the "bruiser" in the Sublime Degree. I could get along without them from now until doomsday. They deserve only our scorn. As Worshipful Master, Tom, I hope you will ignore them and help to create a spirit that will put them out of business as far as Acacia Lodge is concerned.

You also can get along without the professional traveling "King Solomon"--he who invites himself to "take the East," who keeps a notebook and enters another name as he tries mightily to break someone else's record in the number of Fellow Crafts raised.

The Grand Master's message on "The Sublime Degree," appearing in your Blue Book and required to be read in every Lodge in Indiana before the second section of every Master Mason degree, is the first step in assuring that the Sublime Degree be sublime.

Beyond that, everything remains in the hands of the Worshipful Master. Nine times out of ten he can stop the farcical performance before it begins by careful selection of his cast. (He also can put a stop to it while it is going on, and don't you ever forget it.)

Before, During, After

Let's also consider what we can do in addition to the degrees that may make a well-seasoned Freemason instead of merely a dues-paying member.

Several months ago I called your attention to a published essay by M. W. Brother Conrad Hahn. [1] Remember? These few paragraphs will bear repeating:

A program of good Masonic education should be set up and put to work, first of all, for initiates and new members, but once that labor is being effectively carried out, a program for the older member should also be set in motion by some competent Masonic instructors in the Lodge. In my opinion, the lack of such educational work in the average Lodge is the principal reason for the loss of interest and the consequent poor attendance in Masonry, over which spokesmen have been wringing their hands for at least a century.

One of the weaknesses of Masonic education is the speed with which the average candidate is rushed from one degree to another, so that the ritual becomes the only Masonic education he receives . . .

Why this unseemly haste? A Lodge of Master Masons does not exist for the purpose of furnishing members for other organizations. Its purpose is to make Master Masons. Then why not take time enough to do just that... ?

If a Lodge has no time to ripen a candidate, to give him good and wholesome instruction before it raises him to the sublime degree of Master Mason, it won't find time to do it after he signs the by-laws . . Do you think you can get the average new member to come back to Lodge for such educational experiences when you didn't require them between the degrees? Of course not!

That's saying it much better than I could say it. And it comes from a distinguished and universally recognized leader of the Craft in the United States.

There's your challenge, my lad. Acacia Lodge can lead the way in doing some of the things that Freemasonry needs done so desperately if the Worshipful Master has the courage and the will to set the course.

With that, I leave you to ponder over the extraordinary circumstance in which the teacher has argued with his pupil for the first time. As the Book of Common Prayer would say it, "Here endeth the Second Lesson."

--Your Old Mentor

[1] Conrad Hahn, "Planning for Spiritual Growth," copyright 1974 by the Masonic Service Association of the United States.