Morality

Morality

Today having Morals and living by them is, in some quarters, considered to be only for 'fuddy duddies', the old fashioned or those who are 'not on their way up'.. This kind of thinking, that Morals are no longer relevant in modern society, allows some to rationalise all sorts of actions which damage their fellow citizens. Freemasons claim no moral high ground, claim no monopoly on morality or the application of it in their everyday lives. Indeed there are many hundreds of thousands of people who live lives which could be described as being Masonic in nature and yet who are not Freemasons. The difference is that Freemasonry, as an Institution, teaches morality to its members in an unusual way during the course of its degrees. Thus is a System of Morality. This 'system' has existed for hundreds of years and remains a central feature of Freemasonry today.

Below is a description of Morality from a Masonic point of view.

'Morality runs like a silver thread through the dogma of Freemasonry from the Ancient Charges to the regulations and ordinances of the present day. No tenet of Freemasonry has been more consistently maintained and free from question. In the very oldest document of the Craft, the Regius MS. (c.1390), the Articles for the Master prescribed that he should be steadfast, trusty and true; must accept no thief for an apprentice lest it turn the Craft to shame', must not supplant another Master but be a brother to him; must be fair and free and do nothing that would shame the Craft. The Craftsman Was charged to love God and Holy Church and his Master and Fellow's; work truly; be not false to the Craft; stand well in God's law; respect the chastity of his Master's wife and his fellow's concubine; be a true mediator; act fairly to all; pay his debts; and swear to be no thief. Antiquity MS. (1686), as another example, char the Master to be a true man of God; to follow the Golden Rule; not to take his fellow's wife in villainy or his servant or daughter; truly to pay for his meat; do no villainy whereby the Craft might be slandered; undertake no work that he is not able to finish; take only reasonable pay for work; be no common player at cards, dice, or hazard; not to go into town by night unaccompanied by a fellow to bear witness that he was in an honest place. Substantially the same was repeated in all the Gothic Constitutions. Nowhere did Dr. James Anderson (c.1678 – 1739) catch the spirit of the Ancient Charges so accurately as on the subject of morality. In his Constitutions of 1723, he did not attempt to make the Fraternity sacrosanct or to paint it as pretending to a degree of morality that it had not attained but, with a commendable restraint, he prescribed only ordinary standards. Masons were required to obey the moral taw, to be good men and true, men of honour and honesty; to work honestly on working days that they might live creditably on holy days, to avoid ill language and behave courteously within and without the lodge, not to envy a brother or supplant him, to avoid excess and offensive language, not to continue together too late Orion long from home after lodge, and to avoid gluttony and drunkenness. The Master was directed to take work as reasonably as possible and truly to disperse his employees' goods as though they were his own. Both the Masters and the Masons were advised to be faithful to employers and honestly finish the work. The Wardens were to be true to both Masters and to Fellows and carefully oversee the work in the Masters absence. While many defects showed up in the so-called landmarks presented to the Fraternity commencing at the middle of the 19th century, none was so serious or showed the shallowness of the investigations so clearly as the omission of any rule of Morality or of any reference to the Moral Law.

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