Cracks in the Freemasonry
By ALCM
LIGHT INVISIBLE, by Vindex (Regency Press, 10s. 6d.).
IGHT INVISIBLE, which is intended to be a counterblast to the Rev. Walton Hannah's attack in Darkness Visible, is in fact a most serious condemnation of English Freemasonry.
That a society counting so many eminent, learned and cultured Christian gentlemen should allow to appear-or be powerless to prevent appearing-such a farago of nonsense and narrow-minded prejudice, flaunting itself in a dustcover carrying Masonic symbols and the legend "The Freemasons' Answer," reveals either a guilty complicity or a powerlessness over its sworn brothers which destroys half the case of the opposition. The general intelligence and the
literary pretensions of "Vindex" may
recourse be gauged by his to Ella recourse be gauged by his to Ella head poem,
"All Wilcox for a hoem,
"All roads that lead to God are good," and the vituperative excesses of word and phrase which mark the first page of his vindication.
Here is a selection: "Venernous," "unprincipled," "insidious"; "withouthonour, without decency, but with diabolical cunning Darkness
ter a ter a
Visible is a sinister disruptive book." And so it goes on; it "distorts," "perverts" and "seeks malevolently by deliberate misrepresentation," etc. After so revealing a first page, no ry, would one, for or against Mason read on unless he shared the prejudice and bigotry of this quaint flower of Anglicanism and Masonry.
"Vindex" tells us he writes "as a clergyman of the Church of England, and as one who humbly claims rated a little deeper than have penetrated than some beneath the surface of Masonic mysteries."
Though his book is called a "must for every Mason," "Vindex" does his craft brethren less than justice, I think, in assuring us that "there is hardly a Mason in England who would not like to see Mr. Hannah horsewhipped, unfrocked from his sacred office, and driven from the country."
He does neither craft nor cloth honour, moreover, in asserting, on page 64: "Freemasonry, although of immemorial antiquity, is undoubtedly ahead of Christianity in recognising the validity and worshipfulness of the One God, the Great Architect of the Universe, the true and Living God most high who has manifested Himself in many ways and under many forms to His children of various races arid climes, yet remains eternally one."
It is not surprising, therefore, that when "Vindex" comes to consider "Catholics and Freemasonry," he should show himself uninformed, inaccurate and the victim of the hatred of Catholicism which he has revealed in earlier chapters. According to this "defender," Fr. Lainez, the second General of the Society of Jesus, founded lodges and worked three degrees of Masonry. Rome and the Jesuits wanted to control Masonry, and when they failed they condemned it.
e
The whole chapter is without reference either to the date of the condemnation of Freemasonry or its terms, or the distinction drawn, even those ose who must condemn English Masonry, between it and the lodges of the Grand Orient.
IRELAND'S LOYALTY TO MARY, by Fr. Augustine, 0.F. m M.Cap. (The Kerryan, Tralee, 12s, 6d.). IN just under 250 pages Fr. Augustine traces the story of his country's devotion to Our Lady, from the time when St. Patrick arrived, full of the enthusiasm roused throughout the Church by the definition at Ephesus of OurLady the Mother of Goda title of Our as Lady that the Irish to this day probably use more frequently and familiarly than any other people. He brings the story down to the foundation in our own days of that remarkable work of Catholic Action, the Legion of Mary, After a most interesting and inspiring chapter on devotion to Our Lady in the nascent Irish Church and earlyGaelic poetry, Fr. Augustine goes on to show how intimately devotion to Our Lady was connected with the early monastic foundations in Ireland. He then Comes to the introduction of the Rosary to the Irish, who were to make it so particularly their own, by the Dominicans in about 1224.
The author shows easily how the story of Ireland's loyalty to the Faith
is inextricably with her devotion to the Mother of God and the Holy Rosary. In 1579 the Protestant Bishop of Lismore. writing to Walsingham, complains of the "public wearing of beads and the praying on the same," in the same breath with "Massing its every corner."
The intimate relation during the centuries between loyalty to Our Lady and their national ideal is traced.