New Foundation raises doubts

According with the Portuguese press the Grande Oriente Lusitano has sarted a restructuring process that will led to the creation of a private legal entity [a Fundação Grande Oriente Lusitano] that aims to administer the large real state of the Portuguese masonic Obedience. The GOL has a a large number of buildings in several Portuguese towns, the Masonic Palace in Bairro Alto and 80 Lodges spread throughout Portugal. The statutes of the projected "fundação" advocate the inclusion, in the executive branch of the Foundation [Conselho Executivo], of individuals coming outside the Craft. The "Fundação" will receive the patrimony of the GOL without any chance of undoing, and will have among its powers to sell and constitute mortgages over the premises taking in consideration the aims of the Foundation. Three active legal entities will constitute the Foundation "Grande Oriente Lusitano": the Associação Grémio Lusitano, the Internato de S. João and the Sociedade Promotora de Escolas. All members of the three abovementioned entities will automatically become members of the "Fundação". The names of the "curators" of the Foundation -that is the Board of Directors- will be solely submitted to the approval of the "Conselho Executivo". This has been considered a way to put aside the monitoring of the Lodges and lay down the power of the Masonic Diet. The process of creation of the FGOL has the present Grand Master, António Reis [1st on the left], as its main supporter and promoter.
The decision has created unrest among GOL members and considered by some sources, as a manouvering by "Brethren well positioned in the Portuguese Government" [Rui Pereira and Jorge Lacão] to take the control over the two-century historical masonic Craft. The articles of association of the Foundation, attributed to Rui Pereira, the current Minister of Interior of the Socialist Government [second at the centre], are required to be submitted to the Government in order that the FGOL enjoys the prerrogatives and exemptions that other Foundations, currently enjoy.
There are no comments from the other masonic entities but the unrest in GOL is monitor for some as a process to introduce a more modern administration in a Craft that has accumulated, through the years, a large patrimony of real estate, part of it, increasily, undervaluated. Another view point out that this incident expresses the posture of an irregular obedience that never cut a clear division between freemasonry and politics, freemasonry and the Socialist political party, mining one of the basic landmarks of tradional freemasonry: to not discuss politics in the Lodges, to not involve the Craft in partisanship. Make clear that Freemasonry has nothing to do with the lust, struggle and battleground for power in the profane world. An inclination that has taken the GOL allover the years through different crisis and to the public spot unfornutatly not for the most convenient reasons.

Grande Oriente Lusitano (GOL)

According with Portuguese press (see Diario de Noticias) An tonio Reis, former MP of the Socialist Party was reelected at June 7, 2008, as Grand Master of the Grande Oriente Lusitano (GOL), the main irregular masonic obedience in Portugal. The Grand Master will be reinstalled in its quality as head of GOL in a cerimony planned to be take place in the 27th September in a hotel in Lisbon. The Grand Master decline to reveal what Obediences will be present go the cerimony of empowerment. Eugénio Monteiro and António Justino Ribeiro will be the deputy-Grand Masters of Antonio Reis. Till now, nothing special. Nevertheless, the GM of GOL take the occasion to invite Regular Masonary (and GLLP in particulary) to open its lodges to atheists and to women.
Being an enthusiastic advocate of pluralism and tolerance, Regular Freemasonry believe, therein, that the Royal Art needs to be accountable to three-hundred years of Masonic tradition and to the Landmarks that we swear to respect. In our oppinion, there is no moral or ethical superiority in being an atheist or a non-believer. This denial of a divine entity is deeply rooted in the French Revolution ideology that asserts that a man with no religion is more free, and respectful than another that follows a religion. For the sake of the argument we may add that if one looks, carefuly, to what atheism as bring - during the last 20th Century - to an important part of Europe, namely to the peoples subjected to the Soviet Empire, there is nothing the world shoud be proud about. Millions were persecuted, jailled or killed by the crime of cherishing a religion in the communist countries. It is a basic masonic principle that every Mason has the soveraign right to pursue the religion of its belief and not the one imposed (or rejected) by any type of majority. This principle has the reverse on NO religious discussions being allowed in Lodge. It is a mattter of reasoning that it will be hard for an initiate to apprehend the esoteric and symbolic sense of the if he keep is mind blind to the spirituality. Freemasonry laws only require Free Men of Good Report to believe in a Supreme Being as author of the Creation. No more than it, no less than it.
Secondly, speculative freemasonry is anchored in the traditions of the operative freemasons, those who build Temples and Cathedrals in the Middle Ages. In this ancient society there is a special role for women: to be companion of Men; their most trustful suporters. As Men need to pass through an Initiation process to be allowed to see the Light, and be reborn as Sons of Light, women achieve the same result when they give a child on birth, the most amazing human enterprise. So Traditional Fremasonry doesn't regard Women as inferior to Men as the above argument may induce. Freemasonry regards Women as different, but no less important for the progress of freemasonry. So the argument is fallacious.
Every Obedience - as any sort of Organization - has its own rules, to whom members are accountable for. Anyone who doesn't accept them is free to stand outside the door. But those who are inside the Brotherhood don't accept lessons of Masonic scholarship from those who, freely, dcide to put themselves outside the traditions of the Order . We are not freemasons by presumption but only by the recognition of our Brethren. This a basic creed.