Religions and Freemasonry

27 September – 2014
Hotel Torinese – Cecina (LI)

The Reasons for a Meeting

On 16 February 2024, a meeting on the relations between the Catholic Church and Freemasonry was held in Milan, which featured speakers belonging to the Catholic Church, the Grand Orient of Italy, at Palazzo Vitelleschi and with a remote report the Grand Master of GLRI Fabio Venzi.

We at Diffusione Culturale met in London shortly afterwards and took part in the meeting for the one hundred years since the consecration of Certes Lodge 4606. The thing that was immediately evident to us was that we were together with Christians of various religious denominations, Hindus, Jews and Muslims, without any problem, fraternally together as recalled by Kipling’s poem, “The Mother Lodge”.

The debate in Italy was and is between the Catholic Church and Freemasonry of the French tradition, while in London and in the rest of the world we find a happy coexistence between faithful belonging to various religious confessions within the Masonic Lodges.

We have thus set ourselves the objective of giving correct information on the relationships between Freemasonry and other religious confessions, where none of these confessions, even if there are sometimes complicated situations, has ever thought of considering Freemasonry something similar to a religion and to excommunicate her as a heretic.

We are victims in Italy of a sort of Catholic/French-speaking cultural hegemony.

We recognize our position in what was recently reiterated by the Grand Secretary of the United Grand Lodge of England, Adrian Marsh:

“The Board has given the utmost consideration to this matter, convinced that it is of fundamental importance to the reputation and well-being of English Freemasonry that no misunderstanding exist within or without the Order.
It will never be possible to state with sufficient firmness that Freemasonry is neither a religion nor a substitute for religion.
Freemasonry seeks to inculcate in its members a standard of conduct and behavior which it deems acceptable to all creeds, but carefully refrains from intervening in the realm of dogma or theology.
Freemasonry, therefore, is not a competitor of religion, even if in the field of human conduct one can hope that its teaching is complementary to that of religion.
On the other hand, the fundamental requirement that every member of the Order believe in a Supreme Being and the emphasis placed on his duty to Him should be proof enough to all but the willfully prejudiced that Freemasonry is an advocate of religion since both require that the man must have some form of religious belief before he can be admitted as a Freemason, and once admitted he is expected to continue to practice his religion.”

Presentations:

The Mother Lodge

Rudyard Kipling

There was Rundle, the stationmaster,
And Beazeley, of the Railways,
And Ackman of the Intendancy,
And Donkin of the Prisons,
And Blake the drill-sergeant,
Twice was our Worshipful
With him that had the ‘Europa’ shop,
Old Framjee Eduljee.

Outside – “Sergeant, Sir, Salute, Salaam”
Inside, “Brother,” and there was no harm in it.
We met on the Level and parted on the Square,
And I was Second Deacon in my Mother Lodge yonder!

We had Bola Nath the accountant,
And Saul the Israelite from Aden,
And Din Mohammed the draftsman at the Land Registry,
There was Babu Chuckerbutty,
And Amir Singh the Sikh,
And Castro of the repair shops,
The Roman Catholic!

We had no pretty ensigns,
And our Temple was old and bare,
But we knew the ancient Landmarks,
And we kept them down to the last detail.
And looking back on all this,
It strikes me,
That there is no such thing as an infidel,
Except, perhaps, ourselves.

For every month, when the Work was done,
We all sat down and smoked,
(We dared not hold banquets
Lest we should violate the caste of a Brother),
And talked, one after another,
Of ​​Religion and other things,
Each referring to the God he knew best.

One after another we talked,
And not a Brother stirred,
Till the morning woke the parrots,
And that other raving bird;
We said it was curious,
And went home to sleep,
With Mohammed and God and Shiva
Changing the guard in our heads.

Often, in the service of Government,
These wandering steps have visited
And borne fraternal greetings
To Lodges of the East and West,
As ordered,
From Kohat to Singapore,
But how I long to see
Once more those of my Mother Lodge!

I wish I could see them again,
My dark and swarthy Brothers,
With the pleasant smell of cigars yonder,
While the firelighters are passed;
And with the old khansamah snoring
On the pantry floor,
Ah! to be a Master Mason of good fame
In my Mother Lodge, once more!

Outside – “Sergeant, Sir, Salute, Salaam”
Inside, “Brother,” and there was no harm in it.
We met on the Level and parted on the Square,
And I was Second Deacon in my Mother Lodge yonder!