How Deep Do The Masonic Roots of America Really Go?

Katherine & I were recently invited to attend a retreat on a farm in Maryland PA, USA with our families. While we were out there, a load of us went to see Young Washington at the cinema (aka "Movie Theatre"). It was a rip-roaring adventure with a very clear hero at the centre. We flew in and out of Washington D.C. and took the opportunity to do some sight seeing. We were privileged to have a tour of the Capitol Building with special access to the Speaker's Office, balcony and chapel. The architecture and history is openly Masonic in a way that Katherine and I were quite shocked by.

However, it does make some sense when you consider that America’s founding generations were the great grandchildren of Protestantism’s founding generations. So many of the colonies were peopled with refugees of religious wars. They weren’t indifferent, but you could not build a nation if they had to first settle the theological can of worms opened with schism after schism, and sect after sect. The secularism of the federal government was practical but it was and is also a moral compromise. It did eventually end up leaving room for Catholicism. And it is sort of based on the most fundamental of creeds in the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob. It is commonly Christian and increasingly Catholic. Islam and Communism are arguably too authoritative and too ambitious to easily coexist in an open society that refuses to impose submission. Freedom is advantageous to evangelical progress …. But it includes freedom for error and freedom to nihilism too. Freedom is dangerous.

Fascinated by all these ideas, we decided to sit down with our friend Michael Hichborn of the Lepanto Institute, who was on retreat with us and is an expert of Free Masonry, to talk through how these ideas co-exist within a very Catholic America.

Let me know what you think in the comments!