Appendix VIII

THE PENALTIES IN THE OBLIGATIONS

Report by Board of General Purposes

Following the request of the MW The GrandMaster, the Board has been

considering the penalties in the Obligations, and is convinced that, while preserving the familiar and time-honoured wording, it would be in the interests of the Craft that they should be removed from the Obligations altogether, and included in some other part of the Ritual. Notice of Motion was given by the President at the Quarterly Communication in March 1986, and the Resolution appears as item 5(i) of the Paper of Business.

The MW the Grand Master first voiced his misgivings about the physical penalties as long as ago as 1979, when he said, whilst addressing the Grand Lodge at the Annual Investiture on 25th April:

He again referred to the matter when presiding at the Quarterly Communication of the Grand Lodge on 13th March, 1985, when he said:

A previous discussion of this matter was initiated by the late Bishop Herbert in 1964, and at the Quarterly Communication of the Grand Lodge in December of that year the so-called permissive variations were approved. They were, as many feel, an unsatisfactory compromise, and have only gained partial acceptance by Lodges; the same moral question, however, remains.

Before his obligation, a Candidate is told that vows of fidelity are required, but that in those vows there is nothing incompatible with his civil, moral or religious duties. A solemn oath is then taken by him on the Volume of the Sacred Law, and the help of God is invoked. But embedded in the Obligation are the physical penalties, to enforce which would involve a serious criminal offence, and which comes as a surprise and a shock to the Candidate so soon after he has been assured that there is nothing in them incompatible with his civil, moral or religious duties. In the days of 250 years ago, when the law provided for the penalty of death by hanging for quite a number of what we should today consider minor offences, it might have beenjust acceptable to put a gruesome penalty into such an Obligation, but in the present day the law and circumstances have both changed to an extent when such penalties are offensive and unacceptable. In such a serious matter as an Obligation it must be considered whether the penalties included are really meant or not. Clearly they cannot be, and never could have been, actually enforced, even 250 years ago. If therefore the penalties in the Obligations are not really meant, this must throw doubt on whether the Obligation is binding so far as the other, more important, matters it contains are concerned. If the penalty part of the Obligation has no force because it could not be carried out, then it can be removed, not just without detriment to the solemnity of the oath, but in fact with a strengthening of the remaining points. The oath or Obligation does not require a physical penalty to make it binding; it stands in its own right being taken in the presence of the Great Architect of the Universe. Standing where they do in the Obligation, the physical penalties often come as a surprise to candidates, however well they have been prepared, and the shock involved in hearing them in this way has deterred many from continuing to progress in masonry. The existence of the physical penalties also gives ready material for attack by our enemies and detractors.

For these reasons the Board unanimously recommends the Grand Lodge to approve the Resolution.

The Board also wishes to make the following points: