Dr. Robert Hickson

8 October 2020

Saint Bridget of Sweden (d. 1373)

Epigraphs

“Exoteric, as distinct from esoteric, relates in part to external reality in contrast to a person’s own thoughts, interpretations, and feelings. It is knowledge that is public, as distinct from being provocatively secretive or cabalistic. Exoteric knowledge need not be knowledge that comes easily or, as it were, automatically. But it should be ascertainable, knowable, and communicable, not only for an elite. In the exoteric, there is no secret doctrine. However, exoteric knowledge presented quite openly can also easily be or seem to be a provocative weakness and appear even so weak that it is provocative to others, and hence even sometimes be deceitfully exploited by others. The Catholic Faith is intimately exoteric. ” (The fruit, in part, of R.D. Hickson’s searching 1974 conversations in Spain with Philosophy Professor Frederick Wilhelmsen (1923-1996)—in a close paraphrase of his vivid and formative insights.)

***

“You do not understand, Hickson. The greatest censorship is self-censorship.” Such were the words of the Russian-Soviet historian Alexander Moiseyevich Nekrich spoken to me in person in the late 1970s, after he was allowed to leave the USSR permanently in 1976. (He was Jewish, I believe, at least ethnically so, but I am not certain.)

The atrophying effects of such an extended self-censorship caused me later to open myself once again to some deeper reflections about secrecy and the occult.

For example, there is a story told to me by an academic philosopher and a native of Lebanon who later converted from his atheism and became a Catholic monk. It was a story about a close Lebanese friend of his father and about a secret that this good friend told him one night at great peril to himself.

This friend of his father wanted to give the young man a warning as well as present to him a piece of little-known, sometimes dangerous truth. This senior man had become a Mason and had gradually advanced “all the way to the top” (his words)—unlike the young man’s own father who had earlier entered, but soon left, Masonry and he did it quietly and from one of the lower ranks and the lower hierarchical orders of “White Masonry.”

The essential and consequential insight which was presented and further explained by the senior occult Mason was as follows: “Masonry is a Gentile front and instrument for Zionism.” (I copy the words exactly, and without further commentary here.) The senior Mason asked for a promise that the young man would never reveal his formidable words, nor their informed source, until he had died. (The young scholar, a future Catholic monk, faithfully kept his solemn promise to his father’s dear friend.)

Many other sources down the years—but not to be discussed here—have shown the close association of Jewry and Freemasonry. However, there usually seems to be genuine fear and a considerable self-censorship connected with any deeper discussion of such a theme and palpable set of historical facts, even if such a discussion only wants to examine these strategic and collaborative matters in the time since the 1789 French Revolution itself, and therefore the additionally consequential and public 1791 and 1806 Emancipations of the Jews—first by the Jacobins and then by Napoleon himself before he went east on military conquest. In any case, whatever one is allowed (or effectively not allowed) to examine and candidly to discuss in public is certainly a sign of real power. Important discourse is often then constricted, or at least attenuated.

Was there ever such a thing as “The Judeo-Masonic Yoke” and to what extent has it been growing and consolidating itself, in order to reform (or to weaken and then punish) its own traditional adversaries such as the traditional Catholic Church? But, our resultant and protracted self-censorship about such matters distorts and atrophies our own perception of reality. Do we agree?

However, I remember the post-Vatican II years of 1969-1971 and the then widely permitted and candid discussions and even published books about “The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition”¹ and, especially then prevailing Jewish indignation about the demeaning or trivializing “hyphen” in the very concept and implications of “the Judeo-Christian Tradition”—at least as the learned Hebrews saw it to be so. The hyphenated yoke, as it were, did not at all please them, because the components placed together under the same yoke were arguably themselves moving in very different directions, and with incommensurate purposes and irreconcilable goals. The modern Jews and the modern Christians (especially traditional Catholics) were still too divided and not sufficiently compatible. This is entirely understandable. But, what happened to ongoing “dialogue” and so-called “ecumenism”? What about the more tolerant recommendations and declarations of Vatican II (1962-1965), not only Nostra Aetate (28 October 1965), among other quite progressive conciliar texts?

But it is also understandable—especially for earlier Catholics—that, under the long reign of Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903), both Masonry and the public conduct of modern Judaism were closely observed and critiqued, and quite separately so. They were certainly not yet to be combined and examined together as under one yoke, as in the concept and proposed reality of “Judeo-Masonry,” which is at least an improvement over the misleading notion of “Judeo-Christian.”

In 1884, moreover, Pope Leo XIII had promulgated Humanum Genus (20 April 1884), his Encyclical that was largely a stern condemnation of Masonry and its occult operations and advanced secrecy. Then, in 1890, about a hundred years after the 1789 beginning of the French Revolution, Pope Leo allowed and encouraged the authoritative Jesuit Journal, La Civiltà Cattolica to publish a three-part analysis entitled “The Jewish Question in Europe”—which was openly defending public justice and mercy, and is usefully structured in three parts: “The Causes; The Effects; The Remedies.”

Much has happened since that restive century after the French Revolution, and especially after the effects of its own revolutionary understanding of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” Yet the traditional Catholic Faith and her Irreformable Doctrine and aspirational Moral Life of Virtue still remain entirely exoteric. That is to say, there is no secret doctrine in the Catholic Faith; the Church is not in any essentially fundamental way esoteric. Moreover, we Catholics have no supplementary nor complementary Talmud or Kabbala. Nor any other secret doctrines or societies. Are we thereby finally considered to be fools, deluded fools?

Nonetheless, while we are remaining and truly being inwardly and sincerely exoteric it is often an exploitable burden, and not an advantage in the operations of a strictly human history. Our forthright doctrinal and moral openness sometimes constitutes even a grave vulnerability and disadvantage.

We must thus learn to suffer well. But this cannot be so without our first (and indispensably) embracing the Cross, and then also without our own generous receptions of the exoteric sources of sanctifying Divine Grace, unto the possibility of Vita Aeterna and its Beatitude—if we do not freely and finally defect.

–FINIS–

© 2020 Robert D. Hickson

1See, for example, Arthur A. Cohen, The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition (New York: Harper & Row, 1969, 1971).