‘The very cement and support of society’

    

It’s not often a lodge thinks to tender a formal statement of contemporary social importance. Of course that’s not easy to do. Government intrudes into our lives so often and so directly, it’s nearly impossible to form a civic-minded opinion that doesn’t trespass into partisan politics. Like sectarian religious views, political opinions are forbidden in our lodges. That is a key ingredient that makes our essential harmony possible, but it also has stifled much potential discussion of ideas. We seem to have filled the silence with less provocative conversations, and the fraternity expects its lodges and their members to act, and make Masonic charity evident in their activities.

Late last year, one of the cofounders of Columbia Lodge 1190, part of Grand Lodge’s academic lodge program, contacted me for an opinion on a statement the lodge crafted. Columbia Lodge should be commended simply for thinking and speaking on what’s happening outside the Temple today. And, since today is World Day of Social Justice, I hereby share with you Columbia Lodge’s recent proclamation:

Freemasonry, at its core and throughout its ritual, promotes the principles of Social Justice. By meeting “on the level,” we are summoned to recognize all with whom we stand as Brothers without regard for any differences that may, in the profane world, serve as pretexts for exclusion, prejudice, intolerance, or hatred. Columbia Lodge 1190 affirms and embraces the principles of Social Justice so eloquently expressed within our ritual, and strives to become a beacon of inclusion and Brotherhood within the Craft.

Columbia Lodge was constituted for Masons with a connection to the Ivy League university uptown in Morningside Heights: alumni, students, faculty, etc. The lodge has no affiliation with the university.

I am flattered my opinion was sought. I am neither a member of the lodge nor connected to the university. (I graduated from the downtown behemoth private university.)

What first comes to mind is Freemasonry’s teaching of Justice. It is a Cardinal Virtue in Freemasonry, just as it was to Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and others. As we reveal in the Entered Apprentice Degree:

Justice is that standard which enables us to render to every man his due, without distinction. This virtue is not only consistent with Divine and human law, but is the very cement and support of society; and, as justice, in a great measure, distinguishes the good man, so should it be your practice to be just.

Unlike Fortitude, Prudence, and Temperance, which are inner qualities, this fourth Cardinal Virtue is exhibited outward. Justice is social, so, to my mind, “Social Justice” is a redundancy.

More problematic is a modifier prefixed to Justice. Any qualification limits the meaning of the subject. For instance, today also is International Pipe Smoking Day. Without that second word, we have a general image of stressed addicts huffing their drug and littering the world with discarded butts, but with the modifier “Pipe” in place, we may envision serene hobbyists sweetening the air with gentle Cavendish in hand-carved briars, perhaps whilst reading Tolkien or playing chess in the study.

Words matter, and prefixing “Social” to “Justice” crimps the universality of justice. Lesson in Grammar and Rhetoric.

Then of course there is the politically combustible usage of the term in today’s hyper-partisan society. “Social Justice” is the all-inclusive excuse for everything from the “decarceration” that makes public spaces dangerous to the spectacle of grown men putting their hair in pigtails to steal the championships and scholarships of women’s sports. Most of the people outside who would use the term probably would have no love for Freemasonry. Read Columbia University’s thoughts.

About a year and a half ago, I reproduced the then current message from the then president of the Masonic Society, which dubs Freemasons the “Enlightenment Social Justice Warriors” but invokes the Cardinal Virtues because all we have to do is uphold the meaning of Masonry with its familiar anodyne language.