APOLITICAL ASSOCIATION
As we mentioned in other pages, the regular Masonic obedience's prohibit stands to be taken or interventions to be made in political or confessional conflicts and disputes.
As they want clearly to stress their dedication to their initiated task, they also refuse to pronounce on objectives, demands or protest-actions, however respectable these may be.
The dangers inherent in an intervention of freemasonry in the conflicts of the profane world are numerous : it is more than likely that freemasons mutually have different opinions about the social problems surrounding us. They would not be able to accept that their Grand Lodge should take a stand on them, either on their behalf or on behalf of a majority of them. Regular freemasonry avoids the conflicts of this century in order to keep arguments out of the Lodges. It is but too aware of the fact that any deviation from this line of conduct could lead very far. One single interference, even for the most respectable purpose, would create a precedent that would inevitably result in new pronouncements. By not interfering in the things with which it has nothing to do, regular freemasonry can distance itself from action-, pressure- or information groups of any nature, as well as from political parties, trade-unions, religions and from the points of view taken by them in social life.
Freemasonry does not require anything from the authorities, except the protection guaranteed to all inhabitants in a democratic regime : the right of assembly and freedom of conscience, in other words the basic conditions for the existence of any Masonic organization.
Precisely because regular freemasonry is apolitical, it is evident that, outside the Lodge, it does not require anything of its members : anyone is free to engage himself provided that two conditions are met : in the first place that the law is observed (terrorism, for example, is incompatible with masonic ethics) and in the second place that a stand is never taken as a mason. Consequently, every member is required always to make a clear distinction between his masonic activities and his actions in public life. In the Lodge he is a freemason, nothing more and nothing less. In his party, his trade-union, etc. he is not supposed to make himself known as a freemason and even less to try and get profit from it. The ritual, the spirit and the climate in a traditional Lodge will certainly leave no doubt that there is an unbridgeable gap between the profane and Masonic worlds.
Of course, this does not mean that the profane actions of the freemason are not, to a certain extent, influenced by his Masonic formation.
