Writing to Melville E. Stone on December 2, 1908, Roosevelt explained what he believed should happen when a president's term ended:
“when the President leaves public office he should become exactly like any other man in private life. He is entitled to no privileges”
Roosevelt was not diminishing the presidency. He was protecting the distinction between the man and the office. The office carried extraordinary authority, and the man temporarily entrusted with it exercised that authority. When his service ended, however, so did the privileges associated with the position. The experience remained. The history remained. The service remained. What did not remain was a continuing claim upon the authority or privileges of the office.
That principle sounds remarkably Masonic, and it raises an uncomfortable question for Freemasonry: Why don't we do the same thing with the Master of a Lodge?
The Office Is Worshipful. Is the Man?
Freemasonry teaches a Mason repeatedly to distinguish internal worth from external distinction. Wealth does not make the Mason. Social position does not make the Mason. Titles do not make the Mason. The fundamental symbolic garment of the Craft is not a crown, chain, medal, or elaborate uniform. It is the apron. The Level reinforces the same principle. Albert Pike summarized its symbolism succinctly when he associated “the Level” with “Equality.”
Yet Freemasonry does something curious after a Brother serves as Worshipful Master: it makes the distinction permanent. The Brother leaves the East, but he does not entirely surrender its title. For the remainder of his Masonic life he may be addressed as “Worshipful Brother.” He may wear distinctive regalia identifying him as a Past Master. Introductions emphasize the office he once held. Protocol, conversation, and sometimes the culture of the Lodge itself reinforce the distinction. What began as a temporary office gradually becomes a permanent identity.
There is nothing inconsistent with Masonic equality in having a Worshipful Master. A Lodge requires government. Someone must preside, make decisions, maintain order, appoint officers, administer the Lodge, and assume responsibility for what occurs during his term. The Master possesses authority because the Lodge has entrusted him with an office.
But the office has a term.
Why doesn't the title?
Washington Steps Aside
George Washington offers an especially powerful example because he was not merely the first President of the United States. He was also a Freemason who had served as Master of Alexandria Lodge No. 22. Washington therefore understood both kinds of authority at issue here: the authority of the presidential office and the authority of the Oriental Chair.
On March 4, 1797, Washington attended the inauguration of John Adams in Philadelphia. The ceremony marked something the young republic had never experienced before: the voluntary transfer of presidential authority from one elected president to another. Adams became President. Thomas Jefferson became Vice President. Washington, who only moments earlier had held precedence over both men, was now a private citizen.
At the conclusion came a small act whose symbolism exceeded its size. Washington yielded precedence to President Adams and Vice President Jefferson. He had outranked both men that morning. He no longer did. Rather than continue receiving precedence because of what he had once been, Washington stepped aside for the men who now held the offices.
For Freemasons, the symbolism should be difficult to miss. Freemasonry teaches through physical acts. We move from one place to another. We stand in particular positions. We receive and surrender objects. We wear emblems whose meaning exceeds their material value. Physical actions communicate moral principles. Washington's decision to yield precedence therefore offers an extraordinarily Masonic image: when the office passes to another man, step aside and let him go first.
Washington carried that principle into retirement. When the citizens of Alexandria welcomed him home and praised his public service, he replied, “In the character of a private Citizen, I have the honor to receive your address.” Later that year he referred to private citizens as “the class in which I now move.” He had surrendered the presidency without surrendering his experience, dignity, reputation, or history. He simply understood that none of those things entitled him to continue occupying the position he had relinquished.
Perhaps that is what leaving the East should look like.
Adams Became a Brother Farmer
John Adams was not a Freemason, which perhaps makes his example even more useful. The principle was not peculiar to Washington or Roosevelt. It reflected a broader understanding of office in which authority belonged temporarily to the officeholder rather than permanently becoming part of his identity.
After losing the presidential election of 1800, Adams knew what the expiration of his term would mean. On December 28, 1800, he wrote François Adriaan Van der Kemp that after the third of March:
“I am to be a private Citizen and your Brother Farmer.”
There is something wonderfully simple in those words. Adams had been the nation's first Vice President and its second President. Yet when his presidency ended, he anticipated becoming a citizen, a farmer, and a brother. His presidential service would remain part of his history, but it did not have to become a permanent rank.
Perhaps Freemasonry should consider doing likewise.
Experience Is Not Authority
A Brother who has served as Master may know far more about Lodge administration than another Brother. He may understand ritual better. He may have encountered difficult questions of jurisprudence, finances, personalities, discipline, or protocol. A wise incoming Master would be foolish to ignore that reservoir of experience.
But experience and rank are not the same thing, and experience is not necessarily current knowledge.
Time matters. A man who served as Master ten or fifteen years ago served a Lodge that may no longer exist in quite the same form. Lodge culture changes. Grand Lodge legislation and Masonic jurisprudence can change. Administrative requirements change. Ritual instructions and interpretations of floor work can change. Even customs once regarded as unquestionable may be reconsidered. The former Master therefore possesses something potentially valuable—experience—but that experience must continually be measured against present circumstances.
“That is how we did it when I was Master” is historical information. It is not, by itself, evidence of how something should be done today.
The permanent honorific makes that distinction more difficult. Advice sounds different when it comes from “Worshipful Brother” rather than simply “Brother.” The title lends institutional weight to the speaker before the accuracy of what he says has been examined. A younger officer may hesitate to challenge him. A newly installed Master may defer to him. Other Brethren may accept his recollection because the title itself appears to certify expertise.
There is an irony here. The title never ages, but the knowledge behind it can.
A man remains “Worshipful” twenty years after leaving the East even though the rules, practices, culture, and Lodge he remembers may have changed substantially. His experience may remain enormously useful, but it may also contain assumptions that no longer apply. The honorific provides no way of distinguishing between the two.
That can produce something more consequential than excessive deference. It can produce influence without responsibility.
The sitting Master must make decisions and live with their consequences. He is accountable for the Lodge he governs now. He bears responsibility for its officers, administration, ritual, meetings, and decisions. A former Master may strongly influence those decisions while carrying none of the present Master's responsibility for them. He can retain some of the social authority of the East without bearing the burden that properly accompanies that authority.
Authority without responsibility is problematic in any organization. Influence without responsibility may be even more difficult to recognize because it operates informally, through reputation, title, longevity, and deference rather than constitutional power.
Masonry Already Separates the Chair From Its Authority
Curiously, Freemasonry already contains an example demonstrating that the lessons associated with the Master's Chair can be separated from actual authority.
Within the American York Rite, the Royal Arch Chapter confers the degree of Past Master, commonly distinguished as Virtual Past Master. The degree developed from the historical requirement that a Mason ordinarily had to be an installed or Past Master before receiving the Royal Arch. As Royal Arch Masonry expanded, requiring every candidate actually to have governed a Symbolic Lodge became impractical. The solution was to permit a candidate ceremonially to pass the Chair.
The distinction between an Actual Past Master and a Virtual Past Master is important. The Virtual Past Master receives the degree and its instruction without thereby acquiring the actual authority or standing of a man who has governed a Symbolic Lodge. Contemporary York Rite explanations are explicit that the degree does not confer actual rank upon its recipient.
Hidden inside that old Masonic accommodation is an important principle: Masonry already knows how to separate the lessons of the Chair from the authority of the Chair.
A Virtual Past Master may receive instruction concerning leadership, responsibility, government, and the Master's station without acquiring authority over a Symbolic Lodge. Knowledge of the Chair does not create authority. Symbolic possession of the Chair does not create authority. The title of the degree does not create authority.
Actual authority belongs to the Brother who has actually been entrusted with responsibility.
The comparison works in the opposite direction as well. The Virtual Past Master may possess the lesson without the authority because he never bore the actual responsibility. The former Master should be able to retain the experience without continuing authority because he no longer bears the responsibility.
In both cases, the principle is the same: authority should follow responsibility.
The Shadow East
The failure to maintain that distinction creates one of the most recognizable problems in Lodge culture. Every Lodge is supposed to have one Master, yet a Lodge may contain five, ten, twenty, or more men permanently carrying a title derived from having once occupied that office. Most former Masters handle that distinction with humility. Many become invaluable mentors. Some understand instinctively that the new Master must be permitted to govern, succeed, fail, learn, and eventually surrender the chair himself.
Institutions, however, should not depend entirely upon individual restraint.
Former Masters may gather together in a familiar part of the Lodge room. From there may come corrections, instructions, objections, whispered consultations, reminders of precedent, and declarations about how things have always been done. Individually, any one of those interventions may be helpful. Collectively, however, they can create what might fairly be called a Shadow East.
The Lodge then develops two centers of authority. One is formal and visible: the Brother presently occupying the Oriental Chair. The other is informal but powerful: men carrying the permanent distinction of having occupied that chair before him. The current Master possesses the authority of office; the former Masters possess the influence of title, longevity, experience, and accumulated social standing. In the worst case, the man sitting in the East can find himself presiding over a meeting that is effectively being governed from somewhere else in the room.
This does not require bad intentions. Indeed, that is what makes the problem difficult. A former Master may genuinely believe he is helping. He remembers difficulties encountered during his year. He sees a younger Master approaching what appears to be the same mistake. He intervenes because he wants to protect the Lodge. Yet assistance can become direction, direction can become correction, and correction can become informal governance. The former Master may not even recognize how much additional weight the word “Worshipful” places behind his opinion.
Washington's gesture in 1797 offers a different model. Once Adams was President and Jefferson was Vice President, Washington did not insist upon walking before them because he had once been President. He stepped aside and allowed the current officeholders to precede him. He did not cease knowing how to be President. He did not surrender his experience, reputation, or wisdom. He simply recognized that experience acquired through yesterday's authority did not entitle him to exercise today's authority.
A former Worshipful Master could hardly ask for a more appropriate symbolic lesson.
Brother Should Be Enough
The history of every Lodge should record its Masters. Their photographs may hang upon its walls. Their accomplishments should be remembered. A Past Master's jewel or apron can commemorate service. A Brother who governed his Lodge exceptionally well should be thanked for that service, and the Brethren who follow him should take advantage of whatever wisdom he acquired while doing it.
None of that requires a permanent honorific.
Freemasonry already has a perfectly adequate way to describe the historical fact: a Brother served as Master. The Lodge minutes record it. The annual proceedings record it. The Lodge history records it. Nothing is lost by saying, “Brother Smith served as Master in 2016.” That statement preserves both the Brother and the accomplishment without transforming the accomplishment into a permanent rank.
Consider how unusual the practice appears when applied elsewhere in the Lodge. We do not normally address a man for the rest of his life as Past Senior Deacon. We do not announce Past Treasurer Brother Jones when he enters the dining room. A Brother who served brilliantly as Junior Warden does not receive a permanent honorific commemorating that station. Those were offices. The Brother served in them, completed his work, and another Brother took his place.
Why should the Oriental Chair operate on an entirely different principle?
Perhaps the answer is tradition. But Freemasonry should be particularly cautious about allowing tradition to escape examination merely because it is tradition. Our symbols exist precisely to make us examine ourselves, and one of the most persistent of those symbols is the Level.
What Does Another Apron Add?
That brings us back to perhaps the most difficult symbolic question. Freemasonry places extraordinary significance upon the white lambskin apron. It is presented to the Mason before he has become a Warden, Master, Grand Lodge officer, or anything else. Its significance does not depend upon office. The Mason does not earn it by reaching the East. He receives it because he has become a Mason.
Then we decorate aprons to indicate offices and accomplishments. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Regalia can communicate function and preserve history. The problem begins when decoration is interpreted as elevation in Masonic worth.
If the plain white apron already represents the essential dignity and honor of the Mason, what can a Past Master's apron possibly add to that dignity?
It can add history. It can represent service. It can remind its wearer of responsibility once carried. But it cannot make the Brother beneath it a better Mason. If it does, then we have contradicted the symbolism of the first apron. The Past Master's apron should therefore tell us something about what a Brother did, never something about what he is.
The same must be true of the title. When “Past Master” merely records service, it is history. When “Worshipful” causes one Brother's opinion to carry greater weight because of an office he once held, it has become status. When that status allows a Brother who no longer carries the responsibility of office to exercise disproportionate influence over the Brother who does, the Craft should ask whether its customs have begun working against its symbols.
Abolish the Title, Not the History
Perhaps Freemasonry should therefore do something radical precisely because it is traditional in spirit: abolish “Past Master” as a permanent honorific while preserving everything worthwhile that the term currently represents. Keep the records, photographs, jewels, and commemorative aprons. Preserve the history. Seek the counsel of experienced former Masters. Honor extraordinary service. Nothing about abolishing a permanent title requires forgetting a Brother's work.
But when a Master's term expires, let the title expire with it. Yesterday he was Worshipful Master. Today he is Brother. Nothing meaningful has been taken from him. The experience remains. The lessons remain. The friendships remain. The record of his service remains. What disappears is only the suggestion that yesterday's office confers today's elevated status or that yesterday's knowledge carries authority simply because of the title attached to the man who possesses it.
Theodore Roosevelt believed that leaving the presidency meant becoming “exactly like any other man in private life.” George Washington, himself a Worshipful Master, surrendered the presidency and physically yielded precedence to the men who now occupied the offices of President and Vice President. John Adams looked beyond his own presidency and saw himself becoming a “private Citizen” and “Brother Farmer.” Within the York Rite, the Virtual Past Master degree itself preserves the distinction between possessing the lessons associated with the Chair and possessing actual authority to govern.
These examples point toward the same principle. Knowledge may survive office. Experience should survive office. Wisdom should survive office. Respect should survive office. But authority and responsibility belong together, and when responsibility passes to another Brother, the authority associated with it should pass with it.
A Mason enters the Lodge as a Brother. He may advance through its offices and eventually be entrusted with the Oriental Chair. For a season, the Brethren call him Worshipful Master, not because he has become inherently greater than they are, but because they have entrusted him with greater responsibility. Then his season ends. He steps down from the East, another Brother assumes the chair, and the former Master meets him upon the Level.
Perhaps the final lesson of the Oriental Chair is not learning how to acquire a title, but learning how to surrender one.
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