FREEMASONRY

New Zealand Tablet, 22 December 1910, Page 2110

FREEMASONRY

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —As a subscriber to your valued journal I always look forward week by week to the next issue, and I cannot but express surprise that a paper that has reached such a high literary standard should drop so low as to insert such drivel as appears over the num-de-plume of ' Tonsor' in your last issue: As a Freemason of nearly thirty years' experience in many parts of the world I have no hesitation in characterising your correspondent's letter as an ebullition of stupid sarcasm and deliberate falsehood. He has stated more than enough to satisfy any Freemason that he was never initiated or made a member of a Masonic Lodge, and I challenge him to give the name and number of the Lodge which he alleges admitted him. I can quite sympathise with the hostility of my brethren of the Roman communion towards what they imagine is Freemasonry, for two reasons, viz., first, they confound the pseudoMasonic Grand Orients of the Continent of Europe with pure, simple, and historic Freemasonry; and secondly, these same Grand Orientsat any rate some of them—are themselves, contrary to Masonic teaching and principle bitterly opposed to the Church of Rome and Christianity in any of its forms, and their Lodges are largely political and anti-religious gatherings. Dean Phelan, of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne, clearly explained at a meeting of his parishioners that Archbishop Carr's circular letter dealing with the situation in Portugal, referred to ' Continental Freemasons ' who were ' responsible for those deeds of evil, and were essentially and fundamentally different from the body of men whom we know -as banded together for social purposes. With them we have no quarrel.' I enclose a copy of an address on the ' Nature and Objects of Freemasonry,' which you are at liberty to use as you think fit; and I hope your readers will place that infinitesimal value on ' Tonsor's' statements that anonymous correspondents generally merit.—Yours faithfully, JOHN W. WARREN. Hamilton, December 6.