Curitiba/2002
ETHICS IN FREEMASONRY
Introduction
Human Ethics illuminates human conscience, it supports and guides man’s actions, directing his individual and social behavior. It is a historical and cultural product, and as such, it defines what virtue is, what good or evil, right or wrong, allowed or forbidden is, in each society culture.
What is ethics?
Ethic - Ethos, in Greek, designates the human dwelling.
The human being separates a part of his world, shaping it his way, to build a permanent shelter.
Ethics, as human dwelling, is not something ready and built at one time; the human being is always making habitable the house he set up for himself.
Ethical means therefore everything that helps improve the atmosphere so that it becomes a healthy home: materially sustainable, psychologically integrated and spiritually fruitful. Ethics can be regarded as the study of judgments referring to human behaviour susceptible to qualification according to good or evil, in a determined society as much as in general. Ethics considers virtue as a practice of good and this practice stands as the provider of human being’s happiness, individually and collectively, in which human performances are evaluated according to appropriate behaviour norms.
The path of virtue is always possible. As long as man lives, he has the chance of changing his behaviour and taking different directions for his action, based on value criteria, giving this way his life some personal sense.
What is a code of ethics?
A code of ethics is an explicit agreement among the members of a social group: a professional category, a political party, a civil association, etc. Its aim is the explanation of how that particular group thinks and defines its own political and social identity; also how it pledges to make their objectives real in a way compatible with universal ethical principles.
A code of ethics begins by defining the principles upon which they are built, and it expresses itself through two bases of rules: rights and duties.
Ethics in Brazil
Why does one talk so often about Ethics in Brazil nowadays? However, not only in Brazil is Ethics the current topic. There is a great deal of reasons why we should be worried about this theme in our country. The fact is that we perceive a rapid moral degradation, especially in politics. Or has this moral vileness always existed? Has it by any chance been put in the public eye only now? Either reason, or both combined, presents enough arguments to make self-conscious citizens react ethically.
The present Brazilian economical development has originated practical situations structurally and systematically contrary to ethical principles, generating increasing inequality and injustice, breaking bonds of solidarity, reducing or eliminating rights, throwing entire populations into undeserving living conditions. And all this happens at the same time with scandals, such as the illicit enrichment of some, impunity of others, the prosperity of political hypocrisy of many, etc
After all, everybody will be equally hypocritical, if none of us reacts ethically, acknowledging social, political and civil rights declared in our Constitution:
“The fundamental objectives of the Federal Republic of Brazil are: to build a free, just and solidarity society; to warrant the national development; to eradicate poverty and underprivileged, decreasing social and regional inequality; to advance everyone’s welfare, without prejudice to origin, race, sex, color, age, or any other sort of discrimination.”(Art. 3 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Brazil, 1988).
Ethics and Education
Education is a socialization of the new generations of a society, and as such it preserves the dominating values (morals) in that society. Education also presents itself as a possibility and an impulse towards transformation: development of pupils’ and students’ potentialities.
Every education is an interactive action: it happens through information, communication, dialogues between human beings, and ethics is part of it. Education can be efficient while being an instructing process, and at the same time, ethically harmful, as it was the Nazi education, for instance. It can be good from the point of the view of the dominating moral and evil from the ethical point of view.
Ethics and Social Justice
Political and economical liberalism’s traditional moral has habituated us to think that the field of ethics belongs exclusively to one individual’s wishes and free will. According to this tradition the organization of the economical political juridical systems would also be something “neutral”, “natural”, and not some conscious deliberate construction of men in partnership. Therefore we get used to thinking that the situation of the unemployed, of the starving, of those who migrated because of droughts, those who failed at school, etc., is not part of our ethical responsibility, just because those evils were not caused directly by us.
Ethics in Freemasonry
What we could add to Freemasonry as far as ethics is concerned? In our opinion, nothing.
All we can suggest is a tangible and present day Code of Ethics, in other words, an explicit agreement between the members of the Order, whose aim is the explanation of how the Masons, who compose it, think and define their own political and social identities; furthermore how the group commits itself to reach their private objectives in a compatible way with the universal ethical principles.
Why have I said that nothing can be added? Very well, starting from the principle, according to which to be accepted as a mason, one has to be free and of good customs, one takes for granted that the candidate/neophyte is a person of moral and ethical behaviour above the average as other people.
The expression “of good customs” is broad and subjective; one can consider education, moral, ethics, respectability, jurisprudence based on usage etc. as good customs.
Therefore, when entering the Craft the neophyte ceases to be a reference of behaviour in a society, an icon, and begins to be just a mason, whose only way of living must be one of an unblemished conduct. He will have to keep his hands clean, without blemish, and to exempt himself from any illicit, dishonest or unethical doing.
Freemasonry as an institution and composed by people of ethical values should not be concerned with the ethical and moral formation of its members, for some values should be intrinsic to masons. Nevertheless, this has simply become a mere theory, because unfortunately there are some Lodges or who knows, some Obedience’s which solicit members and consequently an increase of “power” and money and so they skip some obstacles in order to hasten and force the admittance of some people who represent some sort of benefit for members of the lodges.
So who is unethical, then? Freemasonry and its members in general, or some cunning people who convinced some brother to introduce them?
It is obviously clear that those cunning people, very little or not at all prepared to live together with real Masons.
Therefore we understand that it is necessary to create a tangible and present day Code of Ethics in order to distinguish the actions of those “false” masons. However, in our view, it has to be a consuetudinary code of ethics - changeable and dynamic, not legalistic and immutable - after all, there are already in our Order regulating laws of behaviour, which anticipate punishment to lawbreakers (Masonic Penal Code).
Since those “false” masons’ wrong doings are a sad reality, we, who are still undefiled, should try to instill the Beauty and the Lightheartedness of the Masonic Soul into our Brethren’s weak minds, help them in the transformation of their imperfections and on their path towards the erection of their Inner Temple, trimming this way the Rough Ashlar.
Biblography:
1. ANCHEZ,
Adolfo - Ética. São Paulo, Civilização Brasileira, 1997
2. ESPINOSA,
Baruch - Ética. São Paulo, Abril, 1973
3. LOPES,
Antônio de Sá - Ética Profissional. São Paulo, Hedr/USP, 1971
Ir .'. Érika
Yoshino Muniz / Ir .'. Maria Theodora Higino / Ir .'. Dirceu Eney
GRANDE LOJA
MAÇÔNICA MISTA DO BRASIL ABRIL/2002