http://www.ewtn.com/library/NEWAGE/MASONREL.TXT
Most Masons who deny that Masonry is a religion confuse religion with the Christian
religion. They know Masonry is not Christian since if it were their Jewish and Moslem
brethren would object. Since it is not Christian they assume that it is not religious. Or
their views of Christianity as primarily a system of character building and as
synonymous with the decent. kindly. and gentlemanly coincide with their appraisal of
the lodge and they see no conflict between the two institutions. The fact is, however,
that the lodge is essentially religious and possesses all the elements of a religion of
naturalism.
Masons themselves have testified again and again to the religious nature of the lodge
while denying that Masonry should be classified as "sectarian" religion. By this they
mean that the various religious faiths represent on a lower plane that pure and
undefiled universal religion of mankind represented by Freemasonry. For example,
Pike states:
Masonry is not a religion. He who makes of it a religious belief falsifies and
denaturalizes it. The Brahmin, the Jew, the Mohometan, the Catholic, the Protestant,
each professing his peculiar religion, sanctioned by the laws, by time, and by climate,
must needs retain it, and cannot have two religions; for the social and sacred laws
adapted to the usages, manners, and prejudices of particular countries are the work of
man.[1]
Masonry is willing to humor those brethren who go along with the local and tribal cults
so long as they realize that the sectarian doctrines of these cults are simply necessary
evils. Pike explains:
But Masonry teaches, and has preserved in their purity, the cardinal tenets of the old
primitive faith, which underlie and are the foundation of all religion. All that ever
existed have had a basis of truth; and all have overlaid that truth with errors . . .
Masonry is the universal morality which is suitable to the inhabitants of every clime, to
the man of every creed.[2]
He adds, "Religion, to obtain currency and influence with the great mass of mankind,
must needs be alloyed with such an amount of error as to place it far below the
standard attainable by the higher human capacities."[3] Masonry, however, strips
sectarian religion of these encrusted errors and reveals itself as the universal religion.
While religion gathers the barnacles of superstition and error, Masonry remains pure
and undefiled. It becomes Christianity without Christ, Judaism without the Law, Islam
without the Prophet.
