Behind the Lodge Door: Church, State, and Freemasonry in America

341 Pages·1988·2.23 MB·English

by  Paul A. Fisher

BEHIND
THE LODGE DOOR
CHURCH, STATE AND
FREEMASONRY IN
AMERICA
Paul A. Fisher
2
To Ruth and our children
Maureen Elizabeth
Kathleen Ruth
Sean Paul
Ann Regina
Margaret Veronica
Megan Marie
Matthew O'Mara
Patricia Siobhan
Terrence Jerome
4
CONTENTS
AMAZING DISCOVERY
Court's Dramatic Reversal On Traditional Religion * Bias On The
Bench * Justice Frankfurter's Religious Biases * Unitarian Influence
* More Cause For Concern: Freemasonry * Discovering Masonry's
Secrets
PART I: UNDERSTANDING THE CONFLICT
1. Lifting The Veil
What Mussolini Found * Church Exposes Masonry In 1738 * Barruel's
And Robison's Revelations * Freemasonry In Early America *
Legislatures Investigate U.S. Masonry * Other Early Activities Of
Masonry
2. The Mind Of Masonry
The View From The Lodge * Pike's Morals And Dogma * Albert Pike
* Other Integral Characteristics Of Masonry: Prejudice * Atheism *
Teacher Of The World's Children
PART II: TARGET--THE CHURCH
3. Warring On The Church--I
Insult, Abuse And Violence * The War Against Catholicism Intensifies
* Know-Nothing Power * Humanum Genus Exposes Masonry *
Masonic Influence On APA * Sectarian Means "Non-Protestant"
4. The Craft And The Klan
The Klan Moves North * Jews Attacked * New York World Exposes
Klan's Anti-Catholicism * The Craft And The Klan * The Klan In
Action
5. Footsteps In The Sand
A Tombstone Becomes A Stepping Stone * A Klansman Moves To
U.S. Senate * The Court's Ku Kluxer * Black Evades The Issue
6. The Craft Fights Religion-Clause History
The Historic Record Of Religion In American Life * State Constitutions
* Constitutional Conventions * Debates In First Congress * Federal
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Legislation * Messages And Addresses Of Presidents * Days Of
Thanksgiving And Prayer * Earlier Supreme Court Decisions *
Masonic View Of Religion Clause * BluePrint For Court's Re-Direction
* Masonic Argument In Perspective
7. Defusing The Parochial Aid Bomb
"The G.I. Bill Of Rights" * Parochial School Aid At The Threshold *
Enter Justice Black * The Assault On Parochial Aid * Congress
Presses On * Everson Wends Its Way
8. Everson: Masonic Justice Built On Sand
Further Preference For Non-Belief * The "Religion" Of The Religion-
Clause * Reaction To Everson * McCollum Reinforces Everson
Philosophy * Everson's Enduring Impact * How Religion-Clause
Cases Came To Court * Secularizing Religious Colleges * Melding
The Craft And The Court--A Summary
9. Warring On The Church--II
The Catholic Population Threat * Catholics Help Masons * The
Church's Rapprochement With Masonry
PART III: TARGET--THE STATE
10. Warring On The State
Masonry In The Civil War * President Andrew Johnson And Masonry *
Masonry And The Philippine Insurrection * The American Connection
With Philippine Masonry * Masonry And World War I * Communism
And Freemasonry * The Craft And Spanish Communism *
Communist China And Masonry * Masonry, Communism And The
Catholic Church * Masonry's Political Orientation Confirmed *
Masonry Wins Again * Masonry In Japan
PART IV: TARGETING MEN FOR THE FRATERNITY
11. How It's Done
The Lure * Targeting The Candidates * The Binding Oaths *
Symbolism * Masonry And The Media * Masonry And Politics * The
Fraternity's Disguised Power * The Military And Masonry
AFTERWORD
APPENDIX A * Masonic Justices
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APPENDIX B * George Washington's Masonry
APPENDIX C * The Ancient Mysteries
NOTES
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AMAZING DISCOVERY
Prejudice by Supreme Court Justices is not a thought which
comes readily to mind when thinking of the American system of
justice.
Yet, for at least three decades (beginning in the 1940s) the
opinions of a significant number of Justices were influenced by an
anti-Christian and anti-Catholic philosophy when rulings were
fashioned on the religion clause of the First Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution. ("Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .")
Moreover, because of stare decisis--the legal doctrine which holds
that a principle of law established by one judicial decision is accepted
as an authoritative precedent for resolving similar legal conflicts--the
religion-clause opinions rendered by the Court during that 30-year
epoch have formed the basis for virtually all subsequent decisions on
the clause since that time.
Although many people have been outraged by the Court's
decisions regarding the place of religion under the Constitution, most
citizens are convinced the American judicial system is eminently fair
and just.
The latter view prevails largely because of a perception that Court
nominees are carefully scrutinized to assure representation on the
bench of a broad spectrum of the nation's varied groups. For
example, it is generally thought that certain segments of the
population have a non-defined "right" to a seat on the Court. When
selections for a vacancy on the bench are under consideration,
careful thought is given to a "Black seat," a "Jewish seat," a "Catholic
seat," and a "woman's seat," not to mention choosing jurists who are
sympathetic to labor, industry, and the medical and academic
fraternities.
Strangely, however, mention is never made of two other groups in
society which apparently have been successful in making silent
claims to seats on the Court. Those two groups are Unitarians and
Freemasons. Masons dominated the high bench from 1941 to 1971.
That was an era when traditional Judeo-Christian values were
removed from the curricula of public schools--and from public life
generally.
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That amazing (and rarely discussed) facet of American
jurisprudence was discovered completely by accident when the
author was conducting research on the religion clause of the First
Amendment to the Constitution.
Court's Dramatic Reversal On Traditional
Religion
The research focused on trying to find a rationale for the Court's
dramatic reversal of the role of Judeo-Christian religious values in
public life, beginning in the 1940s.
Careful study showed that the Court's 1947 Everson decision1 was
the keystone opinion upon which almost all subsequent religion-
clause cases have been based. However, close scrutiny of the clause
and the history of its conception and adoption failed to uncover
convincing evidence to support the Court's view that the Constitution
erected a "wall" which separates things religious from things civil in
our society.
For example, neither Constitutional history nor legal precedent
prior to Everson support the following words frequently quoted from
the majority opinion in that decision: "The 'establishment of religion'
clause of the First Amendment means at least this: . . .No tax in any
amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious
activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever
form they may adopt to teach or practice religion . . . In the words of
Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was
intended to erect 'a wall of separation between church and State.'
Reynolds v. United States, supra at 164."2
Following Everson, the Court repeatedly leaned on the "wall" to
impose its will, and prohibited public financial assistance to children
attending schools teaching traditional religious values.
As a consequence, the high bench: outlawed released time for
children to attend religious classes within public school buildings;3
declared atheism and secular humanism to be religions protected by
the First Amendment;4 prohibited recitation of prayer in public
schools, even though the prayer in question was approved by leaders
of the three major faiths in the United States;5 and banned recitation
of the "Our Father" and oral Bible reading as religious exercises in
public schools.6
Related cases denied State funds to religious-oriented schools for
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teaching aids, periodicals, maps, etc.; banned singing of Christmas
carols in public schools; prohibited public school teachers from
teaching in religious schools; and held that a law permitting
employees to observe the Sabbath as a day of rest impermissibly
advanced a particular religious practice, and thus violated the
religion clause.
Those decisions by the Court seemed to demonstrate a bias in
favor of a totally secularist society, and my research could uncover
no convincing evidence that the First Amendment ever was intended
to quarantine religion from public life, a proposition being advanced
suddenly by the Court in the 1940s.
The Court's curious tilt stirred nagging questions:
Why did the high bench suddenly take up an interminable series
of religion-clause cases in the middle of the 20th Century?
Why did the high bench in these latter years seem to ignore the
legislative history of the religion clause in the Constitutional
Conventions, and when it was crafted by the First Congress and sent
to the people for ratification?
Why was a figure of speech--"a wall of separation between church
and State"--enshrined as a rule of law?
Legal briefs submitted by attorneys in the various religion-clause
cases provided no answers; nor did the Court's numerous opinions on
the subject illuminate the dilemma.
Bias On The Bench
And then, by accident, the obvious answer suddenly suggested
itself in mid-summer, 1975: There was bias on the bench.
That insight into the puzzle was partially provided by a 1975
article in The Washington Post, titled, "The World of Felix
Frankfurter," which basically consisted of excerpts from a book by
Joseph P. Lash, based on diaries of the late Justice Felix Frankfurter.
The article quoted Frankfurter's colleague, Justice Louis D.
Brandeis, commenting on Justice Hugo L. Black, author of the
majority opinion in the seminal Everson decision. Some justices in
the minority on that decision viewed Brother Black as being less
rigorous than they in denying state aid to Catholic schools. Brandeis
said:
"Black hasn't the faintest notion of what tolerance means, and
while he talks a lot about democracy, he is totally devoid of its
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underlying demand which is tolerance of his own behavior . . . ."7
That excerpt prompted me to visit the Manuscript Division of the
Library of Congress to read portions of Frankfurter's diaries and
papers, as well as available papers of the other Justices who had
participated in the Everson decision.
A box of Frankfurter's papers, titled "Photocopies of Missing
Manuscripts," contained a record of a conversation between
Frankfurter and Brandeis, dated July 1 (no year, although internal
evidence suggests 1922), in which the latter is quoted as saying he
"never realized until [he] came to the Supreme Court how much
(judges] are diverted by passion and prejudice and how closed the
mind can be . . . . " 8
In a conversation with Chief Justice William Howard Taft, Brandeis
said the "lines of cleavage on the Court" are not political differences
between Democrats and Republicans, but "on progressiveness, so
called--views as to property."9
Conversing with Frankfurter on July 2, 1924, Brandeis said there
is a great deal of "lobbying" on the Court, and results are achieved
"not by legal reasoning, but by finesse and subtlety."10
Further, memoranda in Frankfurter's files (and in the files of other
Justices) make clear that the minority opinions in the Everson
decision reflected strong disapproval of the opinions and tactics of
Justices William O. Douglas and Black, particularly because Black's
majority opinion (joined in by Douglas) conceded that the State of
New Jersey, if it chose to do so, could pay transportation costs for
children to attend Catholic elementary schools. The minority were
adamantly opposed to such a concession to the free exercise of
religion.
In an April 30, 1952 memo to Frankfurter following the Zorach v.
Clauson decision (343 U.S. 306), Justice Robert H. Jackson stated
that the "battle for separation of Church and School is lost."
He added: "The doctrine of separation never had a chance against
pressure groups, except that this Court should unswervingly apply it
as an absolute . . . .
"The wavering came," he went on, "in Everson. Black, in all good
faith, believed that strong words about separation of Church and State
would be acceptable to its enemies if it were seasoned with bus fare
refunds. What he overlooked was that the enemies of separation were
at once given an incentive to further aggression and the dialectics to
support it . . ."11
In a March 9, 1948 diary entry, Frankfurter wrote that Justice
Harold O. Burton "hasn't the remotest idea how malignant men like
11